


Reality Playing Games

by TheMessAfterTheMarty



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Being Lost, Can be read romantically or bromantically depending on what you want, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, It's not my fault they're very affectionate friends, Phandom Big Bang, Phandom Big Bang 2017, Phil really needs to stop tripping over his own feet, Survival, Video Game Mechanics, Wilderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 08:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12477940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMessAfterTheMarty/pseuds/TheMessAfterTheMarty
Summary: The world of Medieval fantasy was one that Dan and Phil knew well. After all, it had been the stage for countless stories, day-dreams and video games played well into the night. They learn the hard way, however, that escapism isn't nearly as much fun when you don't know how you got there, and you can't find your way back home.Written for the 2017 Phandom Big Bang!





	1. Prologue

Phil woke up groggily, missing his sheets and feeling a bit too cold for comfort. The first thing he noticed was that he was lying face down on some surface that was hard and distinctly uncomfortable. Well, that was clearly not his bed.

Realising this, he scrunched his nose up in confusion as he blearily blinked his eyes open, feeling something scratch against his moving face. It took him a moment to clear the fog of sleep from his mind and mentally process what he was seeing, but as soon as he did, he thrashed around and sat up, grasping the ground beneath him. No, the  _ leaves  _ beneath him. Wide-eyed and breathing rapidly, he studied his surroundings. He was in a forest, in what seemed to be a small clearing. The ground was hard and cold soil, quite far from his beloved bed, and was, as he felt under his hands, scattered with crispy, dry leaves. The trees around him seemed to go into infinity, fading into fog in the distance where branches and leaves had failed to block the view.

“Ow,” he muttered, seeing a small cut that had formed on his left forearm, sitting up straight. In his frenzied mission to twist around, he’d scratched his arm on a branch on the ground. It didn’t seem to be a particularly deep cut, but it was worse than he’d like it to be, considering that he appeared to be quite far away from any medical supplies. His mind was conflicted in regards to whether being hurt made him more distressed about his confusing situation, or if he was just glad to have a relatively normal and familiar problem to focus on –  a problem that wasn’t waking up alone in his pyjamas in an unknown forest. He decided to leave the cut for now.

As he was getting to his feet, he noticed something was a bit off about his surroundings. First of all, he noted with some confusion and reluctant relief that his bed didn’t seem to be entirely missing. Most noticeable was the large piece of squared bed sheet hanging from a tree by the edge of the clearing, like an obnoxiously blue censor bar pixelating the growth behind it. He also thought he saw part of his equally bright pillow emerging from under a bush, and his night stand not far from it. The objects looked distinctly out of place in the forest landscape.

However, there was also something else, something he could not quite put his finger on, even when he looked towards the trees that had no bright blue sheets hanging over them. It was nothing tangible or specific, but there was… something.  _ It’s the light _ , he thought to himself,  _ or really just the colours _ . He hadn’t noticed when he’d first woken up, as he’d still been a bit out of it, but now that he was awake, it was clear to see. Visual art had never been a field he’d been all that good in, but video editing was. Playing around with colours was a big part of it, and his many years of experience meant he could usually see when something had been done. This wasn’t a video clip, it was like someone had put a filter over reality. It was quite disconcerting.

Then again, nature was full of wonders. Looking up at the sky, he noted it seemed like the sun could be setting, and Phil was not a person who’d spent a lot of his life wandering around in forests during sunset. What would he know what it actually looked like? Or maybe, as he just recalled, it could be sunrise.  _ Despite your sleeping habits, Phil, sunrises are real things that do exist. That would probably make more sense, actually, as you just woke up.   _ Mornings were in no way his area of expertise.

He got to his feet and started wandering around the clearing, occasionally spotting some of his own possessions lying around in leaf piles and tall grass, finally walking over the the bush that he’d seen house his pillow. Dragging it out from the dirt, he noticed it had gotten quite wet and dirty, unfortunately. Some part of him had wanted to bring it with him when he inevitably had to leave the clearing, just to have some portable feeling of security, but the water in it made it surprisingly heavy, and it would be more of a burden than a help. He opted instead to gather all the things he could find in a pile around his night stand. At least they’d be gathered, if nothing else.

On his way to his designated gathering spot, he suddenly spotted something gleaming among the leaves. Picking it up, he realised it was his glasses. For a moment he just looked at them. He was evidently not quite awake yet, as he did not immediately realise the implications of what he was looking at, and how clearly he saw it.

_ Am I wearing my contact lenses? _ The thought seemed strange to him. He never woke up feeling comfortable if he slept with his contact lenses on for any extended period of time. They dried out after a while, and he’d wake up with his eyes hurting. His brows furrowed as he tried to piece together the situation.   _ I suppose I can’t have been asleep for long, then.  _

All the smaller objects he found, he put in the drawer of his night stand, excepting his glasses. Those he put in his pocket, figuring he’d have to take his contact lenses out sometime in the near future, and when that time came he’d need them.

When all the things he could find were gathered, he covered it all with the bed sheet, which he had managed to get down from the tree with some effort. Looking down on his bright blue and green pile, he was faced with the uncertainty of what to do now that he’d completed his self-assigned task. He looked past the edge of the clearing, between the trees, trying to see past the fog in the horizon for any clue of what might be out there.  _ I guess when you’re done on the inside, there’s nowhere to go but out. _

He took a deep breath to brace himself to go into the unknown, reasoning that he had no reason to feel safer in the clearing - he’d just woken up there, it was just as new as the forest. Taking his first steps into the woods, he grimaced at the feeling of his socks getting wet, and took a moment to stop and look back. The bright blue sheet stood out clearly from its surroundings.  _ At least I’ll be able to find it again easily enough. Don’t worry, stuff pile, I’ll come back for you… I hope. _

He turned back to the forest and continued walking into the unknown.


	2. Discovery

Phil wandered around the forest for a while, at a bit of a loss of what to do. The clearing didn’t seem to hold any answers as to where he was or why he was there, so he’d figured all that was left to do was to explore the area. There was no direction that was better than any other, so he just walked along whatever creases in the terrain that seemed the least likely for him to trip over and that might provide him some clue as to how to get back. Occasionally he’d stray towards little things of interest, like a strange tree trunk, or that movement up in the trees which may have been a squirrel or some other woodland creature. After a while he noticed the terrain did clear up for him to go quite a long way without much struggle, though seemingly only in one direction, like the path was leading somewhere. He figured he was probably in a valley, or some other natural formation similar to it. Maybe he was just not the first person to walk there. _Most paths in the woods are actually formed by animals, not people_ , his brain helpfully informed him. Really the presence of a path could mean anything, or nothing at all.

A trickling noise caught his attention, and he followed it past a few bushes and trees until he found, with some excitement, a stream of water. _Remember, Phil, if you’re lost in the forest, follow the stream!_ Or at least, he’d heard something like that back in his orienteering days. It might actually have been upstream, now that he thought about it - or was he supposed to avoid the stream entirely? There certainly was something he was meant to remember about a stream, as his vague memories told him, so that was some relief. _At least there’s something happening._

This, however, didn’t tell him much more about what to _do_ about it. _This is Shelter all over again…_ He suddenly caught himself glancing around for any looming dangers he could’ve completely failed to notice, like giant predatory birds or forest fires, or anything else. There may also have been a very brief glance at his hands, checking that they were hands and not paws. He felt stupid for a moment before he remembered that he’d just woken up in the middle of an unfamiliar forest and had literally no idea what was going on, so he wasn’t going to shame himself for being wary of the possibilities. _Anything could happen, you never know. Better safe than sorry. Now I_ know _I’m not a badger. Take that, mystery forest!_ He stubbornly refused to spare a thought for all the other ways he could have noticed he wasn’t a badger.

He still needed to make a choice of where to go, and so he decided to do the same thing he’d done with his badger babies in tow; he followed the stream downwards and hoped it would turn out to be a good choice.

After some walking, he suddenly heard a sound, quite different from the regular forest noises. It was barely audible over the trickling of the stream and his crackling footsteps, and so he stopped in his tracks to listen. Without the crunch of leaves and branches under his feet, he heard the sound more clearly. It wasn’t a sudden or crackling noise of any sort, not like footsteps or the sounds of small animals running around, but more of a melodic drone, coming from somewhere around a corner, behind a hill.

Careful to keep track of where the stream was, he began walking away from the water, following the sound. Before long, the melodious tone began taking shape, becoming sharper and more jolted, jumping in pitch, dancing. As Phil walked closer, it became clearer and clearer that the disjointed sounds were the results of someone talking.

As he came even closer to the source of the sounds, he also realised with a grin that it wasn’t just _anyone_ talking. He walked past a rocky ledge around the corner of a hill, which by the looks of it hosted a miniature waterfall from a passing stream. Phil was then filled with both extreme relief and mounting concern as, right before the stream, pacing back and forth on the grassy ground, was none other than Dan Howell, clad in his camouflage shirt and Pokémon trainer pyjama bottoms, keeping up a steady flow of distressed rambling.

“- but that’s impossible, right? This place doesn’t even look familiar – am I even around London? Or in England? Is this what English forests look like? Dammit, Dan, why haven’t you had more experience with hiking, or anything involving woods, or the outside? There’s probably some really obvious clue for where I am, and I just don’t have the damn experience to see it. I mean, I could approach it logically, like I couldn’t possibly have gotten too far from London, but _logically_  I shouldn’t even be _out of my bed_ , much less entirely _out of the apartment_ , or, y’know, in the middle of-“

It was in that moment that Phil’s coordination decided to fail him, and distracted by his discovery, he managed to simultaneously step on and trip over a rather large branch that made a particularly loud snap when it broke, followed by the distinctive sound of his body hitting the forest floor. The debacle was loud enough to be heard by Dan despite his rambling and pacing, leading to the younger man whipping around in Phil’s direction with a shriek.

The instinctive look of horror soon turned to confusion. “Phil!? What the hell!?” Dan shouted.

It took only a moment of Phil trying to pick himself off the ground before he heard Dan scurrying over to help him up. “Hi, fancy not seeing you here,” Phil joked, gesturing to Dan’s camouflage top.

“What the hell is going on, Phil.” Dan asked, clearly finding no time to joke around.

“Oh, you can’t ask me, I don’t know any more than you, probably.” He brushed some dirt off of his knees. “I assume you just woke up here like I did a bit further up the hill?” he asked, nodding in the direction he’d come from, though truthfully he wasn’t certain if his point of origin was there at all.

“ _What?_ I mean yeah, yeah I did, but why are _you_ here?”

“Thanks,” Phil said drily. “I’d assume I’m here for about the same reason as you, though as we’ve kind of established, neither one of us has any clue what that reason is. Did you fall asleep on the couch?”

Seeming even more confused than usual about Phil’s wayward trains of thought, Dan didn’t stop to ask questions before answering. “No? Yes? Maybe? It’s entirely possible but I don’t exactly remember, I tend to notice where I’ve fallen asleep after I’ve woken up, and all I can tell you is that I definitely didn’t fall asleep _here._ Why are you asking?”

Phil pointed to somewhere up on the cliffside, and Dan followed his eyes to a pair of blue and purple pillows balanced delicately on a ledge. “The couch pillows.” If possible, Dan looked even more confused at this discovery. “I found my bed sheets and my pillow, among other things, around where I woke up. I’m guessing the couch pillows are here because they were with you.”

“That makes simultaneously quite a lot of sense and no sense at all - and _how are you so calm about this!?_ ”

It was a valid question. Dan looked somewhere between giving up on everything, exploding or just crying out of sheer frustration from having no idea what was going on. “Oh, I’m not,” Phil admitted. “Like, not really. I guess I’ve just had some time to get used to the whole situation. I feel like I’ve been walking around for _hours_ ...” _Also,_ he added in his head, _you don’t look like you need anything more to rile you up._

“Hours? Didn’t you say you woke up just up the hill?”

“A bit of an understatement, I think, I’ve been walking around for a while, but then again I don’t actually know how far it was. Not like I have a watch or anything. It just felt like a really long walk, but then again anything would feel like a really long walk in wet socks,” he said, looking down at his feet and wriggling his uncomfortably wet toes.

“Take them off if they’re so uncomfortable?” Dan suggested.

“Ew, no, that’d be worse.” Phil scrunched his nose up at the thought. “I take it you didn’t wake up so long ago, then?”

“No, I mean I don’t know exactly how long, either, but I don’t think it’s been hours, at least. Doesn’t feel like it.”

“Weird,” Phil muttered.

For a moment they stood there in silence, Phil again at a loss of what to do about the situation, and Dan still struggling to take it all in.

It was clear to see Dan was unnerved by the whole situation, and an unnerved Dan was not a happy Dan. In these situations, Phil always tried to be as optimistic and relaxed as possible to even out the scores. It was the mirrored version of what happened whenever they were late to an event or in a similar situation, where Phil was the one stressed out of his mind and Dan was less concerned. Because he had experience with the situations being reversed, he also knew it was a fine balance between remaining calm and taking the situation seriously. It’s all well and good to be chill about things, but a bit too chill and you end up not getting stuff done - like packing your suitcase on time, or remembering to check that you have your passport available, to take some entirely hypothetical examples. Phil still stood by that he was usually stressed in situations where it was _very clear what needed to be done_ , unlike the predicament they found themselves in now, but that was another argument for another day.

“So, you hungry? Found any food?” Dan eventually asked.

Phil frowned. “Hadn’t even thought about that, actually.”

“You… You’ve been up for _hours_ and you haven’t even _thought_ about food?” Dan asked, skeptical. Phil shrugged, also a bit confused at himself. “Who _are_ you? And what have you done to Phil Lester?”

“I just haven’t been hungry, I guess?” Phil said, though he knew that gave more questions than answers.

Dan squinted, still skeptical, but just shook his head and moved on. “Well, we’ll need to find some food, anyway, you’re gonna get hungry eventually and so am I, and we don’t know how far we are from people. Do you figure this water’s clean enough to drink?” Dan asked, gesturing to the stream.

“I’m thinking we should maybe wait with taking that chance until it’s necessary, because I’d really not like to arrive at a countryside bus stop in ten minutes with … water poisoning.”

“What is it in water that you can even get sick of?”

“I don’t know, bacteria? You look to me as though I know! Anyway, water aside, let’s gather up the stuff around here and see if we can find anything useful to bring with us,” Phil suggested.

“Yeah, good idea,” Dan agreed. The area struck Phil as much less defined than the one he had woken up in, so he wasn’t quite sure how far off to look. He relied more on seeing odd colours among the bushes and rocks, though the rocks and generally uneven terrain also made that more difficult. However, they managed to gather up a good deal of small stuff, all having in common that they belonged in the lounge. Phil was grateful that his pyjama bottoms had pockets, as they found Dan’s house keys lying snuggly in a patch of grass and it would be quite a hassle to just hold them the whole time they’d be walking. However, except for that, there wasn’t much to keep - leaving pillows, DVDs and games  behind was no fun, but they wouldn’t manage to bring it along. Like with Phil’s  pile of stuff up the hill, they figured that if they weren’t far from civilization, they could come back later to get it.

“Oh!” Phil exclaimed as they were about to get going, seeing some familiar patches of blue and green on the cliffside.

Dan looked over at him quizzically.

“It’s the blanket Bry made for me! Took that with you too, did you?” Phil went over to the ground beneath the patchwork blanket that he’d kept in their lounge for years. It was just within reach, and as he pulled it down, he noted that it’d kept itself dry and clean, unlike his pillow. “Can’t leave this behind!”

“You can’t bring everything, Phil,” Dan said, fondly exasperated.

“First of all, I can absolutely try, but more importantly, most of these things are replaceable, but this isn’t. I had to leave my pillow behind too, even though I wanted to bring it with me, but I can just get a new one when we get home. It’s not the same with stuff your friends made for you. I’d hate to lose this,” Phil said, looking at the blanket in his hands with some sadness in his eyes.

“Yeah, you’re right… and it’s not too big, either, and could come in handy,” Dan relented.

“See? Makes total sense to bring it!” Phil brightened.

“So, safety blanket in hand, you ready to go?” Dan teased.

Phil just stuck his tongue out at him.


	3. Exploration

Dan winced as another branch scratched the underside of his bare foot. Once again he stopped to make sure it hadn’t drawn blood.

“Hey, watch your step,” Phil said, walking over to help Dan balance himself as he checked the skin under his feet. “You could get an infection or something if something scratches you open.”

“I’m trying my best, those tiny branches are just really feisty, and they hide damn well, too,” Dan grumbled.

“Should’ve worn socks to bed like the best of us,” Phil teased, once he’d ensured no real harm had been done.

“And suffocated my feet? Don’t think so, you sock-wearing fiend,” Dan retorted, bring his foot back down and walking along, eyes glued to the ground in front of him.

Dan was, in simple terms, quite upset. In not so simple terms, he was a nervous wreck whose mind was going at full speed trying to piece together the situation they were in, while trying to remain outwardly calm for the simple reason that this inner freaking out had no productive purpose as it had still not resulted in any answers. As much as he was worried about what was  _ going to _ happen to them, he was equally worried about what had  _ already _ happened that he didn’t know or understand.  _ Something _ brought them to the places where they woke up, or more specifically some _ one _ \- he hardly expected a hurricane - and this opened a whole new can of worms,like that someone had some  _ reason _ for putting them here that they did not know what was, and, regardless of that,  _ someone _ had managed to take them  _ straight out of their beds _ out of their  _ locked apartment _ into the  _ woods _ without them even  _ waking up _ , or at least not remembering having done so.

An occasional disturbing comment in a comment section or the acute awareness that his life was relatively public sometimes made him feel a bit anxious, but at the end of the day if he turned off his phone and the cameras, their apartment was theirs, and theirs alone, and no one could get them there. While he understood it seemed overwhelming from the outside, 12-year olds without a sense of boundaries or consequences really weren’t all that threatening once you got used to them and realised they couldn’t actually do anything to you, and all those words on the screen really were just words on a screen.

But now suddenly, all his reassurances were out the window, and they’d gone from lying safely in their beds to being in the middle of nowhere with no clue of how, why, where or who, and this was frankly the most outright _ unnerving _ case of kidnapping Dan could have ever imagined being the victim of.

“Should we try to stick to the cliffside, maybe, unless we find something else to follow? At least we’ll be able to find our way back to where we started, if nothing else.” Phil’s absent-minded question interrupted Dan’s train of thought.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” he replied. “Maybe we could find a good place to climb up as well, see if we could get a better view of the place.” He took a good look at the uneven rock face, emerging from the bushes and partly covered in moss. It wasn’t entirely vertical and probably not impossible for any human being to ascend, but with their combined zero years of experience with climbing, the prospect of getting up there unsecured still seemed a bit too daunting, and Dan really didn’t want to tear his feet against the rocks unless he absolutely had to. They were good to go on the ground for now.

Dan was lost in thought, jumping between patches of soft moss, when he suddenly stopped hearing Phil’s footsteps.

“Dan, stop, don’t move,” Phil whispered urgently.

Dan was about to ask why when he saw Phil’s face and had the common sense to stay silent and not move a muscle.

That’s when he heard it. Leaves and branches crackling under the weight of something much larger than themselves walking not too far away.

A few moments were spent as they, wide-eyed and frantic, silently bickered their way to an agreed solution. The cracks and uneven formations in the rock wall created a dark hollow which seemed like a decent hiding place, made better by the bushes that nearly reached their waists. As silently and quickly as they managed, they crouched as deep into the crevice as was possible, trying to hide themselves from view.

In the shadow of the rock formations, they squeezed as far in towards the wall and as far down as was possible. The bushes in front of them were thick with leaves, but Dan could only hope they would hide Phil’s brightly coloured clothing well enough.

Curled up in the dark, they tried to breathe as silently as they could, as they heard the heavy footsteps come closer. Fortunately not appearing to walk towards them, the large creature seemed to be walking along the rock wall, giving out heavy breaths and covering the bushes in shadow. It was tempting to sit up slightly, just enough to get a better look at whatever it was they were hiding from. However, Dan knew better than to try. The more he saw of  _ it _ , the more  _ it _ would see of  _ him _ . 

As they waited with baited breaths for the creature to pass by them, Dan studied Phil’s face in the low light that slipped between the leaves of the bushes. His brows furrowed for a moment as he failed to see the faint but distinct circle around his irises that would indicate him wearing his contact lenses. He brushed it off, figuring he just wasn’t seeing them from the right angle, and that they didn’t appear so clearly in the dark. If Phil was walking around practically blind - which was Dan’s impression of what Phil’s unassisted eyesight was equal to - he would definitely have mentioned it.

Even after they heard nothing more of the creature, they remained where they were for several minutes. Neither of them felt prepared to take chances.

Then they were finally, cautiously, moving to stand up. “Well, that was traumatising,” Dan said quietly, seeing Phil looking upwards and studying the rock hill intently. “What are you looking at?”

“You think we can get up there?” Phil asked. “I’m just not that excited about going back into the depths of that forest now that I’ve seen what’s in it.”

Dan looked at the wall. It would certainly be a challenge - there was a reason they hadn’t attempted it yet. However, there seemed to be enough places to get a hold on the wall, if you got  a bit creative, though they all seemed too high to reach from the ground.

“You could certainly try,” he estimated, kneeling down slightly and clasping his hands together so Phil could get a foothold.

“Why don’t  _ you _ try?” Phil whined.

“You suggested it, not me,” Dan quipped. “Meaning I get to stay safely grounded for now. And if it works, hey, you’re getting off easy here, at least I’m giving you a boost up.”

“Fair enough,” Phil admitted, starting to climb up Dan’s body, leaning his hands on the wall next to them for support as he got higher up. In all honesty it went much smoother than Dan had expected - if he didn’t know better he’d say the man just floated right up. Evidently Phil had missed his calling as a mountain climber.

Or maybe Dan had just spoken too soon. “Hey, watch it!” he grumbled, Phil’s foot gently hitting him square in the face, knocking his balance off slightly.

“Oops! Sorry!” Phil squeaked from above him, placing the guilty foot on Dan’s shoulder. “Didn’t see you there.”

“Of course you didn’t. Can you get a grip on anything up there?”

“Definitely looks like it, but I might have to make a little jump.”

“A _ jump _ ?” Dan parroted, incredulously. “From  _ my shoulders _ ? You’ve had a lot of bad ideas in your lifetime, but this tops it.”

“Just to really get a grip, then I can pull my feet up better. I promise I won’t land on your head! I can see a crack just above my reach, I’m sure I can get a hold of it, it’s pretty big.”

“I can’t really see anything, so I’ll take your word for it. Okay, ready in one… two… three!”

Barely two seconds later, they were both a mess of limbs on the ground, and all the air in Dan’s lungs had been effectively punched out of him.

“ _ Please _ ,” he wheezed out, “tell me that crack I heard was a stick and not a body part of some sort.”

He sat up with a groan to see Phil looking a bit worse for wear and pulling something black and plastic-looking from under him. “Neither,” he said in a suffering tone. That looked a bit like…

“Your glasses?” Dan asked.

“I should’ve put them aside somehow before I tried that,” Phil criticised himself, looking at the broken spectacles in his hands.

“Yeah, speaking of what should and shouldn’t have been done there, I’d like to think myself too good to say _ I told you so _ , but my aching back is  _ really _ inspiring me to.”

“At least I didn’t land on your head?” Phil said, sheepishly.

“Just  _ every other _ part of me,” Dan retorted.

“Yeah, really sorry about that, are you okay?” Phil asked sincerely, and Dan gave a brief nod. “I really don’t understand what happened, I was so certain I’d get it!”

“I’m guessing your less-than-legendary arm strength failed us?”

“No, you don’t get it, it was as if the crack wasn’t even  _ there _ \- but I saw it! And then it was like the wall was just flat when I touched it.”

“That’s just… really weird. I’m pretty sure the wall follows the laws of physics, Phil.”

“I guess,” Phil surrendered, trying to stand, before he winced and slumped down again.

“Hey, never mind me, are  _ you _ okay?” Dan said, rushing over to help.

“Yeah, just fell a bit weird on my leg, it’s a bit sore,” Phil admitted, supporting a bit of his weight on Dan once he got up. “Nothing a bit of careful treading won’t fix.” He gave a brief smile and took a few steps that looked alright, if a bit halting. “Either way, we’re evidently not getting up there,” he pointed out, looking up at the wall.

“So back into the depths of the woods it is,” Dan concluded, and sighed. “Why must the outdoors be full of things that can kill you?”

“Hey, squirrels survive this every day, I’m sure we’ll be fine!”

Dan raised an eyebrow. “We’re not squirrels. And even if we were, I’m sure a lot of squirrels die every day, too. Anyway, we’re probably just overreacting. We didn’t even get a good look at it. It’s probably not even that dangerous.”

“For all we know it could just be a moose,” Phil added.

“A  _ moose?  _ That thing was  _ huge _ !” Dan said incredulously.

“Mooses are surprisingly large! Really, they’re bigger than horses, they’re like the size of a small mammoth. Actually, is it mooses? Or is it meese? Moosi?” Phil wondered.

“I’ll take your word for it, and I have no idea, they all sound wrong now that you’ve said them all.”

They walked in silence.

“It was definitely bigger than a moose, though,” Dan concluded stubbornly.

***

A new round of walking was then ahead of them. Neither of them were entirely sure how much time had passed - it strangely felt almost as if time didn’t pass at all, even though it could have taken hours. Perhaps it was the lack of variety in scenery that did it. You could only walk past so many bushes before they all started to look exactly the same.

This constant repetition of their surroundings made it all the more easy to spot when something was out of the ordinary, which was exactly what happened when Dan noticed what looked to be the remains of a camp site.

“Hey, what’s that?” he said, changing their direction to investigate.

What they found was the remains of a campfire, surrounded by some logs that may have been seating. “This means there are people close by,” Phil pointed out. “Not necessarily very close, or that they’ve been here recently, but this is the first sign of people we’ve seen at all.”

Dan was already scanning the surroundings, and found something that would hopefully prove to be useful. “And look what I found!” he called out. “A backpack was hanging from a branch over here.” He opened the old leather rucksack and dug through the contents. “There’s quite a lot of stuff in here, actually. Some clothes, which I’m not complaining about,” he commented, sitting down next to Phil and looking through the items in the rucksack.

So far, they’d been fortunate in that it wasn’t particularly cold outside. In fact it was strangely comfortable, even in just their pyjamas, which was unusual for England. However, Dan had no doubt this would change at some point, or at least he wouldn’t mind being prepared for the eventuality that it would. Also, while he was appropriately dressed in his camouflage shirt and inconspicuous grey trousers, Phil was about as camouflaged as Christmas lights on a dark winter night with his bright blue Cookie Monster pyjamas and bright green t-shirt. Since it turned out there might genuinely be things to hide from, Dan took comfort in knowing they could now wear something slightly more appropriate, as the clothes he found seemed to be quite naturally coloured.

Digging through bundles of neatly packed cloth, he didn’t get the impression the bag had been thrown away. Rather it seemed like it was prepared to be used, though the items inside seemed to be a bit old, or at least old fashioned. “I wonder who left this here. Seems a bit weird to just leave behind.”

Phil, who was walking around presumably looking for more things, chimed in from behind some trees. “Maybe they just forgot it there? It’s quite far from the fire.”

“That’s also something, how did it end up over here?” It wasn’t all that far away from the other things, really, still within sight of the campfire, but there were quite a few meters of bushes and trees between it and the fire and that seemed a peculiarly long distance. It was just unnecessary.

Phil’s voice came from a slightly different direction, moving towards the place that, to Dan, would be opposite the site of the fire. “Well, we don’t know how they stayed here - maybe they camped? Maybe someone slept under there? And we also don’t know how they left, it could have… been…” The words trailed off. Dan raised his eyebrows, wondering what had happened. “.. uh… rushed.” Phil finished in a voice barely audible to Dan’s ears, remembering to finish his sentence. 

“Phil?” Dan raised his voice to make sure Phil could hear him clearly, however far away he was.

“D-Dan?” Phil stuttered out. Dan immediately stood up and followed the voice, the bag in hand. “I… I think we might wanna get out of here.”

“What, why?” Dan asked urgently, concerned, walking faster. He turned the corner around a cluster of trees when he finally saw Phil, looking pale as a sheet - almost literally, with his usual complexion.

“I think they ran,” Phil said, meekly.

Then Dan’s eyes went to the ground, eyes widening as he saw deep scratches in the ground beginning almost exactly where he was standing, and continuing into the forest, sometimes accompanied by broken branches and trees, like something large had passed through without a single concern about avoiding them.

“And I don’t think they succeeded.” Phil gulped.

While trying to imagine the scenario made his gut churn with worry and fear, he could see the possibility that he thought Phil was suggesting. Someone had run from the site of the fire, perhaps getting the bag caught on a branch along the way, running along almost the exact same path Dan had run to reach Phil. Whatever may have chased the poor person seemed to have caught them here, because, as Dan was beginning to see, the rocks that he had thought to be dark brown were not entirely so. He considered the grim possibility that it may be blood covering the ground around them. 

They stared in mutual horror at the trail that went into the forest, where the great something seemed to have dragged its prey away. Dan wasn’t sure if it was really his eyes or his fear-stricken overactive imagination that saw the marks in the ground that looked like they were made by hands that had clawed into the ground in a futile attempt to resist, taking the dirt and moss with them as they’d been dragged away against their will.

There was silence between them, neither of them moving a muscle, both simply staring at the scar on the forest floor, contemplating its terrifying implications. 

Dan swallowed. “You think that was the thing that we…?”  _ That thing that we clearly barely avoided being eaten by earlier. _

Phil didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. They both knew it was quite likely that it was the same thing, and even if it wasn’t, the mere possibility was enough motivation to turn on their heels and run.

And after a brief “we should get out of here” from Dan, and a terse nod from Phil, that was exactly what they did. They swivelled around, and took off at something that was not quite a run, due to Phil’s injured leg, but still a very brisk and hurried pace.

Once they finally felt like they were at a safe distance from  _ whatever _ they had just found, they took the opportunity to unpack the bag and get dressed in some new clothes. They kept their pyjamas on underneath, but put on the other clothing over it, so that they were both warmer and better coloured to blend in. The clothes were really old fashioned in style, which in itself raised a lot of questions, and very few answers. The bag also had something resembling bandages, which even if it wasn’t bandages could be used for that purpose, so they covered up the cut on Phil’s arm that he’d had since waking up and had miraculously managed to keep clean.

Feeling somewhat better prepared and better camouflaged, they kept stumbling through the forest, and in the end they came across something they’d both been subconsciously hoping to find.

“A road!” Phil exclaimed, excited.

“Not exactly a highway,” Dan commented, stepping onto the firm ground of the dirt road. “But this was definitely made by people, unlike a lot of those tracks back there.”

With a new spring to their step, they picked a direction to go in and followed it. After about an hour or so, the trees thinned until they were stood in a rather large clearing in the forest, seeing fields of both grass and wheat in their line of sight, and there, at the end of a road that forked off the one they were walking along…

“Buildings! That means people!” Phil breathed out, relieved, and walked briskly towards the structure.

Because it was, in Dan’s eyes, more akin to a single structure than Phil made it sound, though there were very possibly buildings within it. As it appeared from the angle they viewed it from, it was little more than a wall, more than twice their considerable height and built from pieces of lumber stood upright, tied together with rope and cut into spikes on the end. Above and past the wall, he glimpsed what could have been rooftops covered in straw, or something similar. There were also some structures that seemed to be part of the wall, where one could see the fields outside - watchtowers, presumably.

Eventually Phil noticed Dan wasn’t following him, and turned to see Dan looking skeptically at the structure Phil was heading towards. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I just… Well, even with everything we’ve seen so far, I wasn’t really expecting  _ that. _ ” Dan knew that outside urban areas, homemade solutions and buildings were more common and there were certainly some that looked a bit unpolished. However, what stood before them looked positively ancient in comparison to anything Dan had expected them to find. “I don’t really know what to make of it. Doesn’t it seem  _ at all  _ strange to you?”

Phil looked back at the wooden wall, then back at Dan. “Would you rather keep going?” he asked, nodding towards where the road kept going past the clearing and into the forest on the other side. There was something of a joke in the question - they had walked for ages through nothing but woods, and this was by far the most notable thing they had found so far. Just ignoring it seemed ridiculous. However, as Phil stood waiting for a reply, Dan realised he was also being genuine. If Dan really was concerned enough to want to keep going, they would do that. Looking into Phil’s eyes, catching them glancing concerned over at the wall, he also realised he wasn’t alone in being worried about what they were getting themselves into. In the situation they were in, finding people was generally a very good thing, but they were both hesitant of people in general, and Dan was skeptical enough as a person to consider the possibility that anyone they found living out here in the middle of nowhere behind a medieval-looking fence could all secretly be cannibals.

“No,” he sighed, resigned. “It’s getting dark out, and I really don’t wanna be stuck out here on a cold night finding out what nocturnal predators might be competing with whatever it was we encountered earlier. We might find something else along the road before that, but we also might not. We’re gonna get too tired to keep going at some point, too.” Even if he had to admit that time had passed strangely, and he felt like he could keep walking forever, he knew that nightfall was inevitable.

Phil nodded grimly, agreeing with Dan’s reasoning. There had been some exhilaration in finding something new out here, but they were wary to forget that they were in a very strange and unexplained situation overall. They were woefully out of their depth, and any kind of safe haven was welcome.

“Let’s go, then!” Phil gave a quick, carefree smile that wasn’t even close to reaching his eyes.


	4. At Ease

The closer they got the gate, the slower they walked. Neither of them were really sure what to expect, or what to do.

He heard Dan’s voice from behind him. “Can we just decide now that, unless they acknowledge that this is a bit weird, we won’t question this place to anyone’s face? Because no matter what the situation here is, I can imagine very many cases where that’s a bad idea. People tend to get offended if strangers start to question their existence or sanity. Even if they’re just … eccentric.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t make the best first impression,” Phil muttered, agreeing.

“Plus,  if that sanity  _ is _ questionable, I don’t wanna find out what their version of ‘offended’ is.”

“Not everyone in a weird living situation is either insane or wants you dead, Dan.” Phil turned to give Dan an exasperated look.

“Key words being ‘not everyone’, meaning ‘ _ someone’,  _ meaning probably  _ these guys  _ because somehow this doesn’t feel like my lucky day.”

Phil just rolled his eyes, stopping when he noticed they’d almost reached the wall. “That’s … really big,” he stated.

“No shit. Makes you wonder what they’re keeping out,” Dan said.

“Well, hopefully, whatever it is, we won’t be out here with it for long.”

What they’d reached seemed to be a gate into what they presumed to be a village of some sort. Despite the pieces of wood of the gate and wall being identical, there was obviously the road going under it, and there were two of those structures that may be watchtowers, one on each side of the gate.

“Do we just…?” Phil asked, holding his hand up in a knocking gesture. Dan shrugged, looking around. “Oh, this is gonna hurt,” Phil muttered, before banging his fist on the unpolished tree trunks that the gate was made of.

Shortly after, Dan saw a shadow moving in one of the watch towers, and pointed it out to Phil, who followed his eyes and saw the flickering light.

Then they heard a voice call out. “Who goes there, and what brings you here?”

They looked at each other, a silent  _ ‘what do we say?’ _ passing between them. Evidently seeing Phil had few words to offer, Dan took charge, looking back up at the shadow. “Travellers,” he said, voice raised to be heard. “just passing through. We were looking for a place to rest for the night.”

Without another word from the shadow, the gates creaked open moments later, and a caped man hopped down from the stairs to the tower and met them as they entered. He seemed friendly enough.

“Apologies for the interrogation,” the man said. “It is a precaution for safety here, and while often it has been ignored in favour of hospitality, recent circumstances have made it necessary to honour all precautions.”

Phil was too busy being astounded at the sight that was before them to really listen. The opening gates had revealed to them the view of a street in what looked like an incredibly old village, of the sort you might expect to have seen in the Middle Ages, or in their case in video games with a vaguely medieval fantasy setting. “What circumstances?” he heard Dan ask, concern tainting his voice.

“Our young hunters,” the man said soberly. “Their return is much overdue. Where they are, what may have happened to them - we do not know. They may simply be lost, or delayed on their journey home. However, much time has passed and they know the forest well, and their unexplained absence has made our village… wary.”

The statement was followed by a narrowed look at them both, and Phil saw him glance especially warily at their clothes. Despite their attempts to hide their own clothes, he knew they hadn’t been entirely successful. After all, they intended to hide themselves from animals, not blend in with medieval fashion. He had a full set of clothes on, but looking down, he saw glimpses of bright blue and green in the gaps. Dan had barely even put on any extra clothing, just tying something that may have been a scarf around the bright Pokéball patch on his pyjama bottoms, since his gray-and-camouflage coloured outfit otherwise had blended in quite nicely with their surroundings. However, now, he felt like they stuck out like a sore thumb, and if the people here were already on edge, walking in like a mystery on legs was maybe not what they wanted to be doing. It was only reasonable of them to be skeptical.

“We spent some time walking through the forest,” Dan said, “and we didn’t see them out there. I wish we could’ve been of more help.” He seemed sincere, and Phil had no doubt that he was. People disappearing was not a pleasant experience for anyone.

His mind flashed back to the abandoned campfire they’d found, and the devastation not far from it. He really hoped the people who went missing were alright, but he couldn’t quite convince himself they would be, after what they’d seen.

“The information is appreciated, nevertheless,” the man replied, indeed also looking sincere. “If you would wait here a moment, I have to close and secure the gates. I will be back momentarily to show you around the village, if you’d like.” 

The man had a kind smile, and as Phil watched him climb up the tower again to control the mess of ropes that seemed to control the gates, he felt much better than he had before. They’d found somewhere safe to stop, after all.

The welcoming peace they’d begun to feel from the man’s warm presence didn’t last for long, however. Distracted as they were by his impressive climbing up the watchtower - not exactly  _ necessary _ , as they spotted a ladder on the inside, but clearly quite efficient - they didn’t notice the old woman approaching. Before they had time to understand what was really going on, they were on the receiving end of a round of furious shouting from her, and they were  _ really  _ not sure why.,

As it turned out, he and Dan had not been entirely honest, as something in Phil’s mind had warily suspected. Dan had been technically right; they hadn’t seen the hunters that had gone missing. However, they  _ had _ seen traces of them. In fact, they had in all probability not only been by their abandoned fire place, and seen the signs of one of them being dragged away, but they had found some of their belongings.

Namely, they had found a young man’s backpack, full of clothes - clothes that they were now in part wearing. This had now been pointed out to them with the ferocious rage which could only result from a mother’s worried eye spotting her missing son’s homemade clothing on the backs of complete strangers.  _ Somehow much worse than what I was worrying about _ , Phil thought, thinking back to the gatekeeping man looking skeptically at their clothes, perhaps to some extent recognising them.

And that was the predicament they very suddenly found themselves in, suddenly a local spectacle that was attracting a growing audience.

“Look, we’ll give everything we took back!” Phil insisted. “We have the bag we found it in, too, I’m sure there’s something in there you’d want returned to you. We promise we never meant to steal anything from anyone, and we certainly didn’t do anyone any harm - we never even met anyone out there!”

“And we’re supposed to believe our boys just left their things, and wouldn’t come back for it, or come back here when they saw it was gone?” Her eyes were narrowed and her tone biting.

Dan fumbled for a believable explanation. “Well, if they are still out there they might just not have had time to both notice it was missing and to come all the way back here, but…” He faltered, understanding they needed to tread carefully on this topic.

“We’re not so sure they’re out there anymore,” Phil finished quietly.

Concern shadowed the faces of their onlookers. “Explain,” an old man demanded.

“There… there was something. Something big,” Phil started, getting skeptical looks for his lack of precision. “A creature. An animal possibly, but nothing we’d ever seen or heard of, anyway.” He hoped they hadn’t just been overreacting to an animal that was harmless and well-known to the locals. “It sounded huge, steps and breath heavy - I wish we’d gotten a good look at it, but we, well, we hid from it.” 

The old man raised an eyebrow. Dan came to their defence. “We didn’t know what it was, and we were in no way prepared to defend ourselves from it. If anything attacked us we could be dead before we knew it.” He wasn’t quite sure why he felt such a need to defend their actions to these strangers, but he did.

“Anyway,” Phil continued, a bit carefully. “By the campsite where we found the bag, there was… there were… “ For once it seemed Dan wasn’t going to help him finish his point. “It looked like something had dragged someone away. Someone who had been running from it. There were gashes in the ground, and …” He lowered his voice to a whisper, the vivid images still in his mind. “a  _ lot _ of blood.”

“The poor lies of a murderer,” the old lady accused, eyes narrowed. “How convenient for you, that there are no one to tell us your story is true, that those people whom you claim to not have laid a hand on were simply dragged away by some  _ mysterious beast _ , leaving their possessions to be claimed by  _ innocent wanderers _ such as yourself, and leaving us no clues to tell us what  _ really  _ happened.” It was painfully clear she didn’t believe a word of their story.

“There really is a monster out there!” Dan insisted.

“ _ There is no such thing! _ ” the woman hissed at him. “Our forests are peaceful - there are no beasts of the nature you describe, there has never been and there are none now! You killed them yourselves and are only trying to cover it up!”

Dan and Phil looked at each other, helplessly. They’d delivered the whole truth, as honestly as they managed, but they weren’t believed. They realised they had little to offer in the way of proof other than their word, which was obviously doubted. It really could seem like they’d simply robbed and possibly killed the hunters and stolen their things, and then journeyed onward.

“That is  _ enough _ , Raelene!” the old man shouted at the woman. “Regardless of what the truth is, you have no proof to make such accusations! Until you can prove your suspicions thoroughly, these men are our guests.”

“They arrive dressed in my son’s clothing! They should be executed for what they have done!” she exclaimed furiously.

“And they have offered to return it to you. I would think if their aim was to steal, they would at least make the attempt to convince us to let them keep what they had found. But these men simply attempt to rid themselves of blame, while offering to redeem any wrongdoing that has been done. I do not see this as the actions of guilty men.”

“Some wrongdoings cannot be undone,” she spat at him, “I will believe them when I hear it from my boys’ own mouths.” With that, she turned on her heel and strode away.

The old man turned back toward them. “I must apologise for old Raelene, she is only understandably concerned for her sons. Both of them were in the missing hunting party. As I said to her, there is no sufficient proof to accuse you.”

“So you believe us?”

“I have no grounds to judge otherwise,” he said casually, making them a bit uneasy. That wasn’t a ‘yes’. “The circumstances do not condemn you, nor do they protect you. There is room for each man to choose his perception of the story. Were I you, I would watch my back - many of the village have their judgment clouded by concern and grief. No harm should come to you, but I present no guarantees, and you may find that finding lodgings could be a challenge.”

It seemed that was all he had to say about that, and the old man walked away, leaving them even more concerned than they already were.

They had a moment of awkward silence before Dan broke it. “Well, that was… ominous.”

“I’m sure people are nicer than he made that sound, they’re just a bit… on edge,” Phil argued.

“We’ve been here for about five minutes and we’ve already been accused of both robbery and murder, and nearly sentenced to death, so excuse me if I’m  _ a bit wary _ of the locals,” Dan said drily.

Their gatekeeping friend returned to show them the local tavern, which doubled as an inn for the few travellers that occasionally passed through. He was clearly somewhat wary of them after their explosive encounter with the old woman Raelene, but he agreed with the old man - who clearly was someone whose opinion he respected - in that there was no true proof of their guilt, so he would treat them with courtesy. They could tell he wasn’t quite convinced in either direction, however.

As they were left alone by the entrance to the inn, Dan pointed out something that they really should have thought about before. “We don’t have any money,” he deadpanned.

“Somehow I hadn’t thought about that,” Phil said. “You don’t suppose they’d let us stay on goodwill?” He smiled sheepishly.

Dan just looked at him with that  _ oh yeah sure they will _ face. Somehow the sarcasm got through even without sound.

As it turned out, their concerns were warranted, and Phil was reminded why small towns could be difficult to handle sometimes. Word had travelled fast, if the innkeepers’ sceptical greeting line “so  _ you’re _ these  _ travellers _ ” was anything to go by. Of course his daughter was engaged to one of the missing men, because  _ of course she was _ , and he seemed about as convinced by their story as the old woman had been. They were promptly thrown out, and ended up sitting on a sort of bench by the wall outside.

They sat there for a while, mostly in silence, just enjoying having a place to actually sit down and take it all in, the unanswered question of  _ where do we go from here _ hanging in the air between them. At some point it started raining. Anything else would evidently just make life too easy for them.

“Lo and behold, we might still be in England after all,” Dan muttered, the lack of enthusiasm making the joke feel about as flat as Phil’s wet fringe sticking to his face.

Looking around for somewhere more sheltered to sit, Phil noticed a dog circling a small girl standing under the edge of a roof, wringing her hands and looking around, seeming very, very worried. 

“Hey, Dan?” Dan looked up, and Phil pointed towards the two figures in the distance. “Wanna see what’s up over there? Don’t really see why she’d be outside in this weather, she’s just a little kid.”

Dan frowned at Phil’s point, and muttered a “yeah, sure”, and they got off the bench.

When they reached her, the little girl seemed to completely ignore them until they spoke up, still just looking around frowning with worry. “Is there anything you need help with?” Phil asked.

The girl didn’t look at all startled to have two strangers walking up to her offering assistance. “Well, I was only going in the coop to pet the chickens, you see, but then…” she looked down and kept twisting her hands around each other.

“... Yes?” Dan urged her to go on.

“I didn’t mean to, it was an accident!”

“What happened?” Phil asked, worried.

“I forgot to close the door when I left, and now they’re gone, all gone!” she cried. “I just wanted to pet them and now they’ve all run away! When father comes home and sees the empty coop….” Her lip wobbled.

“Hey, hey, it’s gonna be okay,” Dan said reassuringly, crouching down and gently placing a hand on the girl’s arm.

“Maybe we could help you?” Phil suggested. She seemed really upset and he didn’t want her to get in trouble for a simple mistake. They didn’t have anything better to do anyway.

“We have…” She frowned as she counted on her fingers, mouthing what Phil presumed to be the chickens’ names. “Twenty! There are twenty of them! Could you really help me get them back?”

“Of course!” Phil said, cheery, earning a pair of raised eyebrows from Dan. 

“I'll be over by the coop to count them all! It's at the end of the street, you can't miss it! And try to get them quickly - since the rain came, Papa will be home soon, and he’ll check on the chickens. Remember, the chickens don’t like the rain, so they’re probably hiding away from it!” And then she ran down the street, presumably to assume her post by the chicken coop. 

“Phil, need I mention neither of us have any idea how to handle hens and chickens?” Dan said drily. 

“Of course not, I know that, but c’mon, Dan, even if we don't do that well we can at least  _ try _ to help - otherwise she’d just have to do it on her own, and it's not like we’ve got anything better to do.”

Dan sighed. “Sure. I kinda wanna keep her out of trouble, anyway. She seemed sweet.”

“Softie,” Phil teased, smiling. 

“You know damn well that's  _ entirely _ true.”

They split up to be more efficient, so Phil was alone when he encountered the first chicken. It was indeed hiding from the rain, under a bench similar to the one they’d been sitting on. He somehow managed to pick it up without too much difficulty, though it was flapping around like crazy. He walked as quickly as he could without harming the bird to the coop, where he managed to get it through the door just as the girl excitedly  announced “That’s one! Only nineteen left!” Her uncurbed enthusiasm made him smile. 

They gradually found them all, occasionally bumping into each other, the girl always updating them on their progress as they delivered a new catch to the coop. The twentieth chicken, which they looked for together, had somehow ended up on someone’s roof, but with some teamwork and their ridiculous combined height, they got it down and Dan carried it back.

“That’s twenty! Only…. wait, that was all of them!” The girl’s smile was contagiously bright as she rushed to lock the coop door. “Thank you so much!”

“Rose?” A man’s voice came from behind them, and the girl - whose name was possibly Rose - looked startled. “What’s going on here?”

They turned to see a man, seeming about as old as their own parents, walk towards them looking confused.

“Papa! I, uh… We were just, uh...”

Her father just raised his eyebrows. Phil and Dan just stood there, not sure whether they should say anything. Phil decided something was better than nothing and waved awkwardly.

The man glanced at them, clearly curious, but went to kneel in front of his daughter. “Why were you putting the chickens back into the coop?”

She looked at her feet, clearly embarrassed. “Because they weren’t inside it,” she muttered.

“Well, why weren’t they inside?” he asked, persuading her gently.

She paused. “Because the door was open and they walked outside.”

“And the door was open with no one near to stop them from walking out because…?”

“I forgot to close it…” she said, blushing.

“I’ve told you time and time again you can’t do that!” he scolded, though he fortunately didn’t seem too angry. “Keep going like that and half of them will be gone before we know it!” He stood up, eyes still on her. “I seemed to hear you got them all inside again?”

“Yes, we did!” she proclaimed, proudly. “They helped me!” she said, pointing at them both.

“Good! And yes, I was wondering who these boys were. I’m Khariton, this little one’s father, as you could probably tell,” the man said, stretching out a hand. They both shook it and introduced themselves. “Now, Phil, Dan, I’m assuming you two are these  _ suspicious strangers _ I’ve heard about from the others?”

Phil cleared his throat, nervously. “Uh, yeah, it would seem like that,” Dan admitted.

“Well, come inside, then, if you’ve been walking all day and have run around chasing our chickens I’m sure you’re cold and tired enough already without this rain to soak you.”

Phil actually didn’t feel too cold, surprisingly, but was still very grateful as they followed Khariton into the warm and dry house next door, where they were greeted by the smell of food and a woman who Phil assumed was Rose’s mother.

“Rose!” she exclaimed, rushing to her daughter. “How many times do I have to tell you to get inside when it’s raining? You’re soaked!”

“She was gathering all the chickens she’d let out,” Khariton said, earning Rose a  _ look _ from her mother. 

The woman then turned to look at them. “And who are you two, then?”

“The ones who actually gathered the chickens for her,” Khariton continued to joke as he put away the backpack he’d been carrying and walked up to the woman. “This is my wife, Aliénor - or Alia if it turns out she likes you. Alia, this is Phil and Dan,” he said, gesturing to them. They greeted her meekly. “I hear they’ve come a long way to land themselves in quite a bit of trouble here.”

“What sort of trouble?” Aliénor looked at them skeptically.

“I was actually hoping they could explain that themselves. I’ve only heard the rumours, and depending on who you ask you get a very different story.”

“Well, we were walking through the woods….” Dan started. And so they explained, to the best of their abilities, what had happened, as they were kindly served some form of stew to eat for dinner with the family. To their great relief, their version of events was accepted to the extent that they were believed to have good intentions, though both Khariton and Alia - as they could now call her - clearly still noticed they were somewhat… unusual people. At least they didn’t question the peculiarities of their story.

Rose was a different story, however. “Why were you in the woods?” she piped up once they were done.

“We were pretty lost, to be honest, we didn’t mean to be there - or here for that matter! We don’t even really know where _ here _ is,” Phil explained.

“But … where did you  _ come _ from?” she asked again.

“It’s so far away you probably haven’t heard of it - after all, we haven’t heard of your village, so why would you have heard of ours?” Dan settled for a vague explanation rather than trying to make something up. They seemed to accept it.

“That’s true, I haven’t heard of that many places at all…” she conceded.

“Actually,” Phil started, eager to change the subject. “I was wondering if you knew who the old woman was and could get her son’s things back to her? If it belongs to her son I’m sure she’d want it, especially if he’s gone - she stormed off before we could do anything about it.”

Khariton sighed. “Must be Raelene. She’s the only one who’s had two boys go missing, and by your description it sounds like her.”

“She’s so upset these days she’s become completely unlike herself,” Alia said, sympathetically.

“I wouldn’t say  _ completely _ …” Khariton muttered.

“That poor woman….” Alia continued, ignoring her husband. “We’ll make sure the things are returned to her. If you want to change out of the clothes, we have something else you can wear. You look like you might both be the same size as my son. You can borrow some of his clothes.” She smiled gently.

“He won’t mind?” Dan was probably just extra cautious after the day they’d had.

Her smiled faded to one of sadness. “He’s… not here.” She walked out of the room, possibly to get the clothes.

Phil looked surprised over at Khariton. “Is he…”  _ Is he missing, too? _ Phil didn’t have to finish the question. Khariton nodded grimly.

“Don’t worry, I believe your story. You both remind me a bit of him, actually - you’re good boys, not robbers. You can stay here for the night - if only as thanks for helping Rose.”

“That’s very kind of you, thank you,” Dan said, ever the polite one.

The stolen clothes were put back in the backpack to be delivered the next day, and they were put in new ones that looked quite similar to their modern eyes. Rose was put to the task of showing them were they’d be sleeping for the night, which was in a small hay-filled barn outside. Not the most luxurious living, but completely acceptable, given the circumstances. Rose explained to them that her brother’s bed was empty - but he might come back in the night, and then he’d want a place to sleep! So she’d refused her parents to let anyone borrow it, before they’d even had time to suggest it. 

Somehow, Phil thought they wouldn’t have either way. He didn’t mind - offering a place to sleep to the men accused of killing your missing son was an incredibly kind gesture either way, even if you didn’t believe the accusations.

And so they were left, sitting on a soft stack of hay which was covered in Phil’s blanket - which he’d fished out of the backpack before they’d handed it back.

“I don’t know, Phil… I know we’ve found a place to sleep and this family’s incredibly nice, but I really have a bad feeling about this place,” Dan muttered. “Soon as we can, I just think we should keep going.”

“You want to keep going  _ tonight _ ?” Phil asked, eyebrows raised. “The sun’s nearly gone!”

“Honestly? I’m getting more and more tempted the more I think about it,” Dan said grimly.

“You’re overthinking things. This really seems like the safest place to be, and now we’ve even found a place to stay,” Phil argued.

“The whole situation just doesn’t make  _ sense,  _ and half the people we’ve met have been borderline hostile. It really freaks me out, and I know this is probably the safest place, but everything is just so  _ weird _ . I don’t trust it.”

Phil looked at him in genuine concern. He understood that feeling of helplessness, and being scared, even if they were probably as safe as they could be. The standards at this point weren’t very high. “Look, no matter what we decide, we’re way too tired to do anything about it now, so how about we figure this out tomorrow instead? Can’t hurt to wait until morning,” he suggested, “I can agree to keep going but I really don’t want to camp out in the woods. We need the shelter for the night, so let’s just use the opportunity we’ve been given here, okay? No one except the family even knows where we’re staying, it’s perfectly safe.”

Dan looked to be in favour of this, if his heavy eyelids were anything to go by. “Yeah, that’s probably the best idea.”

“Good, now snuggle up! We’re gonna get cold.”

They curled up against each other, Phil’s blanket sheltering them against any pointy pieces of hay, trying to keep warm as the cold seeped in through the barn walls. Before long, Phil felt himself starting to fall asleep, and caught Dan casting a last concerned look over at the door before he finally closed his eyes and drifted off.


	5. Call to Arms

They woke up to the literal cry of a cockerel through the wall.

Dan twisted and turned into the blanket to get some more sleep, before a second cry from the chicken coop pierced his ear drums. He sat up with a groan. “That’ll wake you up, sure enough,” he said, rubbing his eyes. 

Then he looked over at the man sleeping soundly next to him. “Unless your name is Phil Lester, of course.” He rolled his eyes and pushed the sleeping form gently. “Time to get up!” 

He felt the earliness of the hour deep in his bones, and usually he’d love to sleep in - almost any day he’d love to sleep in - but right now they had a problem to solve and a situation to get out of. As his mind woke up and he gradually remembered the mess they were in, he felt anxiety creep up his spine. Relaxing was out of the question.

As early as it seemed for them, village standards were evidently a whole other story, as when he finally dragged himself and Phil into the family’s house - which admittedly might have been quite a while after they’d woken up, and he may have fallen asleep again - everyone had apparently been up for hours.

When Dan pointed this out to Alia, who kindly offered them breakfast when they walked in the door, she just smiled. “It seemed yesterday was quite an ordeal, so we didn’t want to disturb you needlessly. Whatever this day offers, you may need your rest.”

“Well, thank you for that, and for the food, too,” Dan said as he and Phil sat by the table munching on some buttered bread. “Speaking of what we’re doing today, do you… know the area well?”

“I know the village, and some of the forest that surrounds us. However, if you are looking to find your way home, unfortunately I was never much of a traveller myself, and I haven’t spoken to many, so I’m afraid I can’t help you to go far. All I can tell you is that following the road is what will take you to any other village, or city.”

“Yeah, I figured…” he muttered. He hadn’t really expected much more help, but he’d still hoped. “Do you mind if we stay here today, until we figure out what to do?” He didn’t think they’d be much of a bother, but they’d already stayed the night - as complete strangers, he didn’t want them to accidentally overstep and presume too much.

“Not at all, I’m glad for the company - it’s been so quiet here since my son disappeared. You boys remind me of him.” She smiled sadly.

“That’s very kind of you, thank you,” he smiled back. 

As Alia got up to continue with her daily housework, Dan turned his attention back to Phil, who - as usual - was not the most talkative in the mornings. In fact, Dan turned to see Phil somewhat sleepily looking with intense concern at… a bowl of apples on the table.

“What seems to be the problem over there, Philly?” he teased.

“They look exactly the same as the apples at the inn,” Phil mumbled, with surprising seriousness. So he was actually looking at the apples. Some rational part of Dan had assumed he’d just looked into thin air.

“Not exactly the end of the world, is it? Most apples look quite similar,” he pointed out, a bit confused.

“Well,  _ yeah _ , but the whole bowl just looks  _ exactly the same,  _ like it’s the  _ same bowl of apples. _ It’s  _ weird _ ,” Phil continued, seeming very concerned.

“I think you might need to wake up a bit before we make you face something as extraordinary as, well, anything outside the front door.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Phil conceded, yawning. “what I probably need right now is just some sweet, sweet coffee,” he said, dreamily.

“Right, you’ve gone like, more than a full day without any, how’s that going?” Dan asked with some genuine concern. With all that was going on, he hadn’t even realised, but Phil’s caffeine addiction was just a fact of life they usually didn’t fuss to much over, but which was no doubt a fact. He drank a cup or two every day - tried not to make it three - and was in a generally awful mood in the morning before he’d gotten his first. As a new cup of coffee was never really further away than a trip to the grocery store or the nearest Starbucks, usually just the kitchen, they didn’t consider it too much of an issue - of course, they’d never expect to get into the kind of situation they were in now.

“Surprisingly, I feel just fine, which is  _ also _ weird. Not a bad thing, obviously, but… with all the stress you’d think it’d get worse, but it barely even crossed my mind. I honestly usually feel worse in the  _ hours _ it takes us to go to the store on the mornings where we’ve forgotten to buy more, and now it’s been more than a day, and I’m just fine.”

Before Dan could think of a response, their conversation was interrupted by two figures that came running through the door. He barely had time to see that it was Rose followed by what appeared to be a shaggy old dog, before they were in the next room. They quickly returned as Aliénor called out, reprimanding her daughter for running inside, and so Rose took the time to introduce them to what turned out to be the neighbour's dog, whom she was apparently very good friends with and called Rags.

Playing around with a friendly and curious old dog proved to be a welcome distraction from everything, but Dan’s mind was quickly troubled again.

It was absurd, but Phil’s comment about the apples had gotten stuck in his mind. Of course, the apples themselves wasn’t the problem - he only had the word of a very tired Phil that there was anything odd about them at all - but there were so many other things he now couldn’t help but notice and think about. Small things, but strange things, like the notable yet never quite uncomfortable temperature, how the villagers’ language seemed far too fancy and, well,  _ educated _ for the surroundings, the unpredictable laws of physics - of course Dan was doing a lot of things he’d never tried before, so he didn’t really know if all of it was unusual, but a lot of things just didn’t go like he expected. In addition to that, he noted the cut on Phil’s arm had seemingly disappeared overnight, together with the hint of a halt he’d had after fall off Dan’s shoulders and hurting his leg. He wasn’t really complaining about that, but it all just felt strange, and unnerving - even not considering the fundamental issue of how they ended up where they were, and not knowing where that was.

He was wondering about all these little things, and if he was just being paranoid, when suddenly he heard a ruckus in the distance.

“Hey, do you guys hear that?” Everyone but the dog quieted down.

Alia looked worried.  _ So this isn’t anything normal _ , Dan thought to himself.

“I’ll find out what the noise is about. Rose, you stay here, and you boys do that, too.”

They waited patiently. Even Rose seemed concerned about it all - she was just a kid, but clearly even she’d caught onto that something was terribly wrong these days. Even if the adults didn’t tell her everything, their worry had rubbed off on her, and she stayed mostly quiet while her mother was outside.

It took a while before Alia came back, looking white as a sheet. They fussed over her for a moment, before she finally said something. “One of the boys has come back.”

Everyone went silent. Then Phil spoke up. “That’s a good thing, right? He’s alright?”

“He… he was apparently the only one who survived. They were… taken. There is something in the woods. The poor boy, he could hardly keep himself on his feet, but he came to warn us. Whatever it is… it is coming here, and we are all in danger.”

The way it sounded to them, what they had seen in the forest had just been a piece of something much bigger - and that something was on its way to the village. That was far from good news.

“So what do you do now?” Dan asked, concerned.

“We…. I suppose we prepare to defend ourselves. The gates are closed and the men working in the field have been sent for, so they will return here to safety. After that… I do not know. We do what we can.” Alia’s voice wavered slightly as she spoke. She was clearly terrified, but keeping it together - in part, they supposed, for her daughter, who was looking wide-eyed at her mother.

“Phil, can I see you outside for a moment?” Dan said, not waiting for an answer before he grabbed Phil’s arm and marched them out the door. 

Phil, meanwhile, just looked a bit startled at being dragged away as Dan spun around to face him again once they were outside.

“We need to get away from here,  _ now _ ,” Dan insisted.

“ _ Go? _ ” Phil looked bemused. “Go where? What are you talking about, these people need our help!”

“Our  _ help? _ ” He frowned in confusion. What good could they do here?

“Yeah, to protect the town!”

Dan looked at him incredulously. “To protect-? Phil, how in the world are we qualified to protect the town? Are we in any way athletic? Or strong at all, in any way?”

“…  _ No _ , but-”

“Do you have any combat training you haven’t told me about?”

“Not really.”

“If you tried a hundred times, could you have hit someone using a bow and arrow if they were anything but standing still  _ right _ in front of you?”

“… I’ve never tried, but... “ Dan gave him a _ look _ . Phil sighed. “Probably not.”

“And believe it or not, I have no secret background with medieval warrior training, so I’m pretty much the same. So answer me this, okay: How are we in any way helpful to this campaign? We’ll be killed in an instant!”

Phil shuffled his feet, looking defeated. He huffed. “Dan, we have to try. We’re not warriors, or anything, that’s true, but look at these people.” He gestured around him at the abandoned marked posts, the shut windows with shutters so flimsy and unfit you could almost see inside through the space above and below them, the clothes hung out on strings to dry. Despite having a wall surrounding it, the town was hardly a stronghold, and it seemed to be quite ordinary. “They’re just people, too. All these villagers are just  _ ordinary people.  _ They don’t deserve all this, they never asked for it, and they can’t protect themselves any better than we could. And honestly, does it seem like we have any better option?”

Dan narrowed his eyes and looked grimly over at the wooden wall they could see at the end of the street. By going around the entire village, it did keep them safe but also trapped.

“We could try to go over it, or convince them to let us through the gates before they closed them properly,” Dan muttered.

“ _ Dan. _ ”

“I’m just saying, I’m not too keen on risking our lives for this! Half of these people want us dead, anyway, and if we hadn’t come here, all this would still have happened! We’re here by  _ accident _ , by  _ coincidence _ , and it’s  _ not our responsibility _ to help them.”

“First of all, they don’t want us dead, now you’re just exaggerating. And it’s not about why we’re here - we _ are _ here. We  _ can  _ help. That’s what matters.”

“How are you  _ not freaking out about this _ ? You always freak out about things! How am I the sensible one here?” Dan had vivid memories of being dragged around train stations and airports by a frantic Phil while they were  _ on time _ for the schedule that  _ already included extra  _ time. He really struggled to imagine a world in which unpredictable traffic was freak-out worthy, but waking up in a medieval fantasy universe and being sent into combat was not.

“I _ am _ freaking out, you idiot! I never said I wasn’t! But unlike you I’m not hung up on how we got here, or why, or what it means or where the road leads after this, because it doesn’t change anything! I can’t figure out any of that, and it won’t change what  _ do _ I know, which is that there is a village of innocent people here who are absolutely not prepared for whatever’s on its way, and they need all the help they can get - including ours!”

“But we can’t help them! We’re not soldiers!”

It was at that point that their conversation was halted as they heard the door open and a small pair of feet pattering on the ground. Turning, they saw Rose, holding almost more than she could carry in what was probably her brother’s leftover hunting equipment, among them a quiver of arrows and a sheathed knife. She ran down the street, presumably having been sent by her mother to give it to someone who could use it, Rags following suit.

“Well... neither are they,” Phil pointed out gently when she was out of earshot.

They saw her go stop by the old man they’d encountered the day before, by the gates. He’d been intimidating in the moment, but would hardly be so on the battlefield. Dan thought about the missing hunting party, and how most of the people who would usually be the most qualified for this sort of stuff were all gone.

“You know I’m right, Dan. It’s not ideal or anything, but… it’s just the right thing to do.”

“Fine! Bloody hell…”

“And anyway, whatever trouble’s approaching, I wouldn’t put it on faith that it’s only approaching from one side. We’d be even deader out there, and this is unfortunately very likely still the safest place around, however trapped we are in it.”

Dan grumbled in agreement, sounding annoyed but looking concerned at the wall keeping them in – and other things out. “I wonder if this is what it feels like to be a hamster in a cage. Trapped and denied freedom, but protected from a world you can’t survive on your own- ”

“Dan, this really isn’t the time.”

“No, but just  _ think about it! _ ” Dan huffed, as he turned back towards the house.

They walked back in to find Alia fussing around the living room. On the table there was a growing pile of equipment that was presumably her son’s gear that she was gathering from around the house. A closer look showed that the hasty productiveness was very possibly a way of fighting off fear and concern and possibly panic, if the tears Dan thought he could spot in her eyes was any indication.

“Hey, Alia?”

She looked up, a bit startled. Somehow she hadn’t noticed they’d come in. The concern in her eyes was evident.

“Is there anything we can help with?”

“Oh, no, boys, you don’t have to do that,” she looked even more worried now. “This isn’t your home. You…” she swallowed. “You have nothing to lose here. You don’t need to risk your lives for this.”

Dan gave Phil a  _ look. See? She agrees with me. _

Phil noticed, but ignored him. “To be honest, we don’t have much experience with this, but we insist. We really want to help,” he said earnestly.

She stood in silence there for a moment, seemingly uncertain what to say, before she whispered a “thank you”, and walked over to them, putting a hand on each of their arms. “I don’t know how much of a chance we have, but I know it will be much better with your help.” 

Then she hugged them both in turn and Dan’s resolve melted away like butter. From Phil’s  _ I told you so- _ look, it was apparently clear to see on his face.

_ Oh, shut up, _ Dan tried to squint back at him.

And so Rose was sent out to fetch her brother’s things again so they could borrow it. They sat at the living room table looking over what they had to use - not exactly an armoury, of course, as it all belonged to one person, and even if he’d inherited some things he’d still probably taken the best stuff with him when…

Dan looked towards the sounds of Alia doing something elsewhere in the house, a realisation making his heart sink in his chest. Whomever had come back to warn the village was apparently the only survivor, and as she hadn’t mentioned anything about who it was… that person was presumably not her son. 

Not only had she been informed her whole village - and with it, her whole life - was at risk of going away. She’d also been informed that her son was already dead, and all hope of having him return was gone.

He sighed, the realness of the situation sitting heavily on his shoulders.

“You okay?” Phil said lowly.

“Terrified, feeling out of my depth and like everything’s about to go to hell very quickly - otherwise I’m great,” Dan quipped, but the humour in it was somewhat ruined as his voice broke at the end, the rising anxiety catching his vocal chords.

“I get it, y’know. I know I came on a bit strong earlier about staying, but I actually feel kinda the same, I just…. I’d be just as terrified anywhere else here, I guess. And I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Everything about it just felt wrong, even if staying is probably one of the most terrifying choices I’ve ever made.”

Dan tried to put his nerves aside for a moment to appreciate what a good man Phil was. He knew it was true, and he could see where he was coming from. It was just a lot easier to appreciate Phil’s charitable qualities when it didn’t mean putting Dan’s and - more importantly -  _ Phil’s own _ life in mortal danger. Dan could leave whenever he wanted, technically, so he wasn’t accusing Phil of making him risk something he wasn’t willing to. What he couldn’t change was Phil’s right to gamble with his own life, and the  _ stupid, self-sacrificing - _

He took a deep breath. He needed to stay. Phil wouldn’t be  _ Phil _ if he didn’t stay. Dan technically  _ knew _ it was the right thing to stay, and so in a way, he wanted to. He just also happened to be really liking the idea of them both surviving the day - or he was just so terrified of the opposite it made him nauseous to think about. It was somewhat hard to distinguish between the two. It was probably a mix of both.

“And hey, it’s a bit of an adventure, isn’t it?” Phil said, and Dan was glad he knew him well enough to tell the difference between his  _ looking-at-the-bright-side-of-a-horrible-situation _ voice and his genuinely excited voice, or else he might have found the cheeriness either disturbing or annoying. “Coming in here as complete strangers, the heroes saving an innocent and helpless village from unnamed dangers rolling over the land.”

_ But is that worth risking your life over? _ Dan kept the thought that immediately popped into his head to himself. He already knew what Phil would say about it.  _ I guess that answers one question you’ve been wondering about, at least. Yer a Slytherin, Danny.  _ He sighed. It was maybe not the nicest trait to have. He wondered if he’d feel different if it was just his own life he’d be risking. He wanted to think he would, but he couldn’t say for certain.

“And we’re fighting with bows and all,” Phil continued, evidently trying to psyche himself up. “It’ll be just like a video game! And video games are fun, right?”

“Yes, with our  _ actual lives _ at stake.” And then Phil smiled at him, and Dan met his eyes. He could see the badly veiled fear, because Phil wasn’t naïve and knew  _ exactly _ what they might be risking, but beyond that, there was this innocent courage and a determination that could shine through any hesitation, which Dan thought must be as unique to those eyes as that weird specific shade of blue, green and yellow. 

“We’ll just have to win the game, then.”

***

On the one hand, the battle seemed to come far too quickly. On the other hand, the wait in itself was exhausting. There was only so much preparation you could do with such limited resources.

Dan and Phil spent the time practicing using weapons they’d barely laid a hand on before. Dan discovered that firing a bow and arrow was somehow easier than he thought. It wasn’t that he hit the target every time, far from it, but it almost felt like he could do it if he just... focused enough. It felt strange as that was rarely how it worked whenever you were learning brand new skills; he had frankly no idea where in his mind he’d conjured up how to even hold the bow properly, but he was hitting the target, so he guessed he had it right.

But they couldn’t prepare forever. It was only afternoon when it all started for real.

It all had something of a surreal feel to it. Of course it was all real - he could feel the wood of the walls under his hands, could hear the noises all around him, but it felt so foreign. Clashing metal and arrows flying through the air made for a landscape of noise that didn’t belong in reality.

They were on the wall when they got their first look at what they were facing. The wall itself - perhaps more of a massively oversized fence - had a walkway along the top so they could easily stand with the spikes at waist height anywhere around it. Hidden behind cover, Dan turned to take a look and aim at any one thing in the small army of monstrosities that were crawling out of the woods. It wasn’t… it wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen.

But the arrow flew, he hit something, and whatever it was fell to the ground. More arrows flew, more villagers at the ready. Everything was chaos, but they could only focus on what they were doing. They kept going like that for a while, trying their best to keep up with the numbers, but eventually they were both running out of arrows.

“I’ll go back and get some more,” Phil said behind him, and ran off. Dan registered what he’d said moments later and turned to look, not wanting to lose track of Phil in the chaos, only to see the figure of the other man disappear at an alarming rate downwards.

He heard a sickening crack.

“PHIL!” he shouted, and ran over to the edge of the walkway, looking down to the ground on the road below.

“I’m fine!” Phil groaned, laying on the ground clutching his leg. “... ish. Don’t think anything’s broken, but then again I can’t seem to feel much...”

Dan got down there, with enough sense to go to the nearest ladder before he descended, and rushed to Phil’s side.

“What were you thinking!?”

“I didn’t think it’d be so far down! I was in a hurry!”

“Of all the things…” Dan huffed, taking Phil’s arm over his shoulder. “Of all the ways you could get yourself hurt, you  _ fall down too far. _ Come on, we’re gonna wrap up that foot before you go anywhere.”

He dragged Phil a few roads down to the house where he knew the village’s collective medical supplies were gathered for the battle, and splinted the damaged leg. It was most likely not broken - or else Phil would have noticed - but it clearly hurt like nobody’s business and it was swelling really badly, so he supposed it couldn’t hurt to try and take some of the weight off of it. He was also no expert on broken limbs, so as long as Phil couldn’t stand on the foot, he wasn’t comfortable saying it definitely wasn’t cracked somewhere.

“Thanks,” Phil muttered after the last of the bandage had been secured. “I’m sorry, I know this was a stupid way to get hurt. I could try getting up there again.”

“No, you’re not going to do that,” Dan said, determined. “I know you’re trying to be brave, but I can see it on your face: you don’t believe you could get up there. If you can’t even stand up, you’re just going to get yourself more hurt trying to do anything. You’re staying here.”

“Okay, but you have to go, at least,” Phil insisted, earning a glare from Dan.

“Hell, no, no way, I am not  _ leaving you _ here where I can’t keep an eye on you!” He knew Phil probably wasn’t exactly hurt beyond repair, but the battle was getting increasingly more chaotic and he was genuinely quite uncomfortable leaving Phil out of sight when the man would be pretty much unable to defend himself.

“Dan, you need to think rationally about this.” Phil leaned forward, whispering through teeth gritted in pain. “You’re usually pretty good at that. In all this, strategy is maybe the part we actually should know. We did  _ not  _ waste all those hours of our lives playing video games for nothing. We’ve already said this all seems like a game, so  _ treat it as one _ .”

Dan looked at him, not quite understanding. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Yes, you are, because they  _ need _ you out there. I’ll find someone else to help if I need it, but you’re  _ one of the best fighting chances they have, _ so you  _ can’t _ stay behind here _.  _ A character is wounded - what do you do? You choose your best medics to heal them, and your warriors are sent into battle. Would you send a medic into the field and keep a valuable warrior behind, when another one is already down,   _ just because _ ?” Phil scrunched his face up as another wave of pain washed through him. He took a few deep breaths to steady himself before continuing, voice shaking slightly and eyes boring into Dan’s with a seriousness and an intensity Dan rarely ever saw on that face. “Don't let your emotional attachment to a character cloud your judgment, Dan. Don’t forget, if we lose the game here, it won’t matter where you were or who you were focused on saving - you'll lose me, too.”

They shared a moment of intense eye contact, Phil trying his best to express how serious he was and Dan trying to keep it together. “So you want me to go,” Dan whispered meekly.

Phil’s eyes softened. “There is nothing I want more than for you to stay, Dan. But I  _ really need _ you to go.”

And so Dan did.

He kept trying his best, doing all that he could to help. However, it just never ended. The village had the strategic advantage, but they were woefully outnumbered.

After a while, he heard scream and shouts from another side of the town, and through what little he could see and the words he could make out in the noise, he could put together what had happened.

_ They’re in. _

He stood frozen for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. Would this even change anything? Shouldn’t he just turn around and keep doing what he was doing?

He ran towards the noise to find out what exactly had happened. From behind a corner, he could safely take a look, and saw that a good chunk of the wall had simply been torn down, busted through, so the enemy could come pouring in - and they already were. The village didn’t stand a chance. They’d already lost so many, and there seemed to be no end to the horrors that came crawling out of the woods.

The idea of standing face-to-face with any of those things was what finally drove him to run. He didn’t know where he would be headed in the end, but he knew where his first stop was.

Dan barged into the small house, catching Phil’s attention immediately. “It’s over, we’re leaving,” he said, starting to gather what small amount of medical supplies they would need to keep treating Phil’s wounds.

In the corner of his eye, Dan saw Phil frown and turn towards the door, where screams and shouts could clearly be heard from the distance. “Doesn’t sound like it’s over.”

“We don’t stand a chance,” Dan said bitterly, eyes fixed on his working hands, packing up bandages and ointment in a piece of cloth. “It’s over. We’re getting out.”

“So you’re giving up?” Phil whispered. 

There was a clear tone of sadness in his voice, even defeat, but no accusation. Phil never really blamed him for being scared, or for recognising when he had to stop. It was something he just never did. There was something of a silent agreement between them; they relied on each other to always do their best, and as long as that was the case, it wasn’t shameful to not manage the impossible. Everyone had limits, and that was fine. Phil simply wished things could be different and that the situation wasn’t as hopeless as it was.

“Yes,” Dan sighed, still not looking up at Phil. However, the confession didn’t sit right in his stomach. “Actually, no.  _ No, _ I’m not. Am I giving up on standing victorious over an army of monster corpses at the end of the day? Absolutely. No way in hell is that gonna happen. But I am not giving up our lives, and I’m not giving up on  _ you. _ ” He wrapped up the cloth, finishing his makeshift medical kit. “We’re getting out of here. That is  _ not  _ me giving up.”

He was met with grim silence from Phil as he took a strip of bandage he’d saved and started changing the ones on Phil’s leg, still not looking up from his hands. Screams and clashing metal could still be heard in the distance from outside the barn walls. “You know,” Phil started quietly. “You’d be best off leaving me here.”

His hands froze, and his back stiffened. Something in him was expecting it, but Phil’s suggestion still struck like a blow, and even considering it had his mind stopping at  _ unacceptable _ , like a mental error message.

“I can hardly get far on foot, Dan, I can’t even stand up properly on my own - heck, it hurts when I’m sitting still.  _ You _ could get out of here, but I’d slow you down so much.”

Dan finally looked up and looked straight into Phil’s eyes. “I’d never be able to live with myself, and you know that perfectly well,” he said seriously, before finishing up the new bandage. “Besides,” he said quietly, “I’m never  _ better off _ without you.” 

He stood up and continued with more confidence. “Now, get up!” he said, holding a hand out for Phil to grab. Phil did his best to stand up on shaky legs. He grimaced as he put weight on his damaged side, but Dan did his best to support him, nearly carrying half of Phil’s body. “See?” Dan said. “You’ll be fine, now let’s get out of here.”

They managed, with some effort, to get to the edge of the village and up to the wall, on the exact opposite side of where Dan knew the most danger to be.

“There has to be some way to get down here, _ somewhere, _ ” Dan muttered, looking around as they walked along the top of the wall, careful to crouch down to stay hidden from the forest.

Phil carefully stood up once to see if the coast was clear, as crouching was really not that easy for him with his hurt leg. “Dan…?” he said, stretching his arm out toward the forest, leaning outward over the edge.

Dan immediately went to support him. “What are you doing? You’re gonna fall down again!”

To Dan’s relief. Phil retracted his arm. “I don’t think I could. It was like… it was like I couldn’t go any further. Like there was something stopping me.” He said it all while looking at his hand in fascination.

Dan just looked at him confused and a bit worried.

To his credit, when he looked up, Phil seemed to notice his disbelief. “No, you’re right, it was probably nothing, just a feeling… Just instinct, if anything. It was nothing.” But he looked over at the air beyond the wall with concern anyway.

It was as if it happened in slow motion while it simultaneously happened in no time at all. In one moment, Phil was beside him, taking shallow, rasping breaths as he took a moment to gather strength to go further. The next, he was on the ground.

Dan didn’t know why he’d expected to see the arrow flying through the air before it hit. They really went a lot faster than they seemed to in the movies. He’d barely heard the sound of impact and suddenly Phil was gone, and when Dan turned to look, there was a misplaced stick coming out of his best friend’s torso.

Within seconds, he had Phil gathered up in his arms, safely crouched behind the wall, out of range for further attacks.

“Phil!” he cried out, but Phil wasn’t responding. He just had this dazed look on his face, looking at the piece of wood sticking out of him with what could only be described as horrified fascination.

As gently as he managed, he dragged Phil over to the watchtower they had nearly made it to. There was no one else there, fortunately, and when they were far enough in, it kept them out of sight from nearly all angles.

“Oh, God, okay, what do I do, what do I do….” Dan was doing his best not to freak out, but there was not a single time in his life that anyone had thought to prepare him for what to do when someone had an arrow stuck in their chest. He was honestly not sure if it was even possible to do anything, or if it was just one of those things that would in all cases end in… no. No, Phil would be okay. Somehow.

“What happened?” Phil asked, evidently in shock, still staring at the arrow.

“It, uh...  you got…” Dan steadied his breaths. “You got shot.”  _ Oh no. Oh no, that’s bad. _

“That’s… that’s not good.” Phil said, worried.

“Yeah, that’s right…” Dan chuckled hysterically. “I… I need to go, I need to go get some help.” 

He needed to go find someone who had any clue how to fix this. He tried to lay Phil down as gently as he could, but before he could get up, Phil’s hand managed to grab his arm. “Please don’t go,” he whimpered.

Dan looked back at the face of his best friend, and Phil’s pleading eyes looked  _ terrified. _

“Could you just hold me?”

There was something in his mind that warned him this was wrong. There was something very wrong happening. He should be looking for ways they could  _ fix  _ this, this was just postponing it. What was he doing? He sat down and got Phil’s torso onto his lap, just holding on.

Phil, oddly, seemed to have calmed down  _ far too much _ . It unnerved Dan’s already frazzled nerves, and something in him was still on red alert. “I’ve spent the last few days, at least today, just feeling … just feeling scared,” Phil muttered. “I  _ hate _ feeling scared. It’s… it’s….” He squeezed his eyes shut in pain. The worry in Dan’s chest grew. “It’s exhausting.” He seemed to curl himself closer to Dan, and was speaking so lowly Dan struggled to hear him. “I just wanna feel okay for a moment, and at least with you here I’m not alone and I just wanna feel safe with you here. Now that it’s… it’s already too late, it’s too…. There’s no use being scared.”

_ Too late for what?  _ “They’ll get here eventually,” Dan murmurs.

“Please don’t say that.”

“But they will-“

“Just  _ don’t say it. _ ”

It took a moment for Dan to catch up on what Phil was going on about, why he didn’t want to worry about anything. Those sad but hopeless eyes, the wet blood on his hands.

_ Now that it’s… it’s already too late - ? _

_ *** _

Phil’s chest was going through an absurd set of sensations. Pain like nothing he’d ever felt spread like ink in water, flowing from the wound in the midst of it, but at the same time he couldn’t quite feel it. He felt oddly distanced from his body, and instead tried to feel only what he wanted to focus on: the feeling that there was someone warm around him who wasn’t going to leave him alone. He knew he had a hand gripping onto Dan’s shirt, but he had no idea if it was holding him up, or even if he was using a lot of energy to hold it there.

However, staying there and focusing on Dan also meant that he was also looking on as Dan froze, eyes filling with horror as he seemingly realised what Phil was struggling to fight - and Phil himself was just too tired to be scared of what was coming. As his best friend’s resolve shattered and his face crumpled, Phil’s chest hurt in a completely different way.

 

“ _ No _ , no, please, please, please,  _ no _ , you can’t do this to me, you can’t – you can’t leave me here,” Dan whispered brokenly between failed attempts at keeping his sobs under control. 

“Please, just please, please…” He scrunched his eyes shut, his tears landing on the hand Phil had holding on to his shirt.

“I…” Phil started, his wounded chest making the sound raspy and voiceless, but he had nothing to follow it up with.

“You can do it, you know, I believe in you, you can do it, if anyone you should be able to…”

Phil looked with sad and bemused eyes up at his best friend rambling hysterically.

“You always seemed like you could just ask the laws of physics to take a break, you know? And they’d listen to you. Like they didn’t apply to you in the first place, like they just… like they only did because you let them. Like you could at any time just do, just do something impossible – always surrounded by chaos and hazards, but you never really get hurt, how do you do that, how do you even manage, getting into more trouble than everyone around you combined, yet, yet nothing ever hurt you, not really, like the rules of the universe were just, like you’d decided, like you just, just because you didn’t want them to…”

His whispers faded away. He took a few more breaths, closing his eyes. Phil saw as he swallowed, and then Phil was once again looking into desperate, tear-filled brown eyes, whom he saw were perfectly aware of what was about to happen, despite the bittersweet, tragically hopeful smile that was spreading on Dan’s face.

“Could you do that for me?”

Phil’s brow furrowed slightly in confusion.

“Just ask them not to count. Just make them go away. Make the rules of the universe listen to you. Just do what you always do. Just …  _ be impossible _ . Please. Could you do that for me?”

With the piece of metal and wood still stuck in him, Phil had thought it impossible for his chest to hurt any more than it did. As it turned out, he was wrong, though the pain admittedly felt different.

“Just one more time.” Dan hugged him tighter. The tears were filling his eyes again, the smile gone and the desperation seeping back into his voice. “Just this once. Just make it all go away. Please.  _ Please. _ ”

Phil tried to choke out a response, surprised to find his voice not at all reacting. His lungs didn’t feel right. They weren’t giving him any air. In fact he wasn’t wheezing at all, as he had been earlier – every attempt at speaking just made his body wretch as he could feel something in his throat and an urge to cough he didn’t have the energy to act on.

Dan continued to plead with him, but his begging whispers faded away. He disappeared in the fog that was clouding Phil’s mind.

He couldn’t even remember what he was being asked to do.

The last thing he thought was that he wished he knew what it was. The voice sounded so sad, and so familiar - he so dearly wanted to make it all better. It sounded in pain. Whatever it was that was hurting it, Phil wished so dearly with the shreds that was left of his consciousness that it would stop.

####  ***

Dan refused to leave him behind, even if it would make no difference. Phil’s shaky, rasping breaths weren’t going to last forever. Eventually, he next breath that Dan was so desperately waiting for just didn’t come.

Phil’s eyes were locked with his own, those eyes that had always so  _ full of life _ . Whether they were  scrunched up with laughter, hooded in sleeplessness or shining with tears, even when everything else in the world was darkness, they had light. To the sound of oppressive silence, the light in those eyes flickered out. 

He held on even tighter, his face was wet, and air refused to get into his lungs.

He didn’t want this. He just wanted it all to go away, and also never wanted to let this moment go. Not if it was going to be the last. Not if every step away from the body in his arms was going to be alone.

But eventually, he was left with no choice. The laser focus of his mind lifted and the sounds and sights of the world around him came back. He heard scratching from below them, and no doubt something was going to come for him. If the screams echoing through the streets were any indication, the villagers had far from the upper hand in the battle, and the monsters – those  _ horrible, heartless _ beasts – would close in on him quickly.

Tears still streaming and breathing still uneven, he gathered Phil’s lifeless body up and dragged him into the watchtower, covering him with a blanket and hiding him behind some barrels. Winning or not, those things wouldn’t lay a hand on Phil ever again if he had anything to say about it. As irrational as it may be, the thought of the Phil’s body being further harmed by those things even when it was too late to save the man who’d lived in it made Dan feel ill.

He surveyed what he could see of the village from the watchtower. Grabbing his bow and an arrow, he aimed for a clearly inhuman shadow he saw moving around in the streets, releasing the bowstring and feeling a sense of vicious satisfaction as he against all odds actually seemed to hit it. He struggled to control his breathing enough to aim properly, and ran towards the next tower, keeping his back to the wall.

As another distant scream chilled his spine and his lungs started struggling to keep his breaths regular again, he slid down into a corner out of sight.

Some part of him wanted to be angry, wanted to run straight into the midst of the fighting and take as many of those creatures down with him as he possibly could, fueled purely by the rush of vengeance.

The majority of him, however, was just terrified.

A legitimate threat of death was all around him. If he let himself think too much about it, just imagining what might be around the next corner was positively  _ crippling _ .

For one of the first times in his life, he wished with all of his heart that he had ever been the kind of man who could truly  _ believe _ in things. The whole situation would have been so much easier to handle if he could confidently believe that him going back to the battle had some reward, a  _ purpose _ . Whether it saved his soul for Heaven or had him sent to Valhalla, any faith would have helped, any consolation. 

Instead, any version of his death was nothing but that to him, just another twist on the same story, with no higher purpose, just an end to a meaningless story. Skepticism followed his every thought like a shadow. A trait he usually thought of positively, something to keep him from being easily fooled by thoughts of destiny and luck and psychics, a good attribute to critical thinking, suddenly it all seemed like a curse. He sat there as sounds of people’s suffering made his skin crawl, trying to stay brave, trying to find something to hold on to and ground him. Fear and hopelessness clenched around his chest as he clawed through his own mind trying to find something to fight for. 

But in all his frantic searching, it all seemed meaningless, and Dan sat, drowning in his own mind, gasping for air on perfectly dry land.

He thought about Phil’s comments that the world they had fallen into seemed like a game. The battle they were -  _ he  _ was - fighting was certainly something that could have shown up in one. So why was he sitting, hiding from it, when he’d certainly play it quite differently on a screen?

As it turned out, games and reality were very different things.

Reality had no guarantee that if you tried hard enough, you could defeat the challenges you were faced with - and you certainly didn’t respawn if you failed. There were no checkpoints, or saving.

"It can't all be for nothing," Phil had said, but that was exactly it. It could be. He couldn’t save those people, no matter how hard he tried.

There was no  _ winning _ here.

They’d lost, and cold hard reality doesn’t give second chances.

Not to mention… reality had completely different stakes, and the sacrifices were of a completely different world.

Playing a game, most things were worth giving up for the feeling of accomplishment you go when winning, and the experience you had getting there. When you’re done, you put the game away, and you never regain what you lost - but the sacrifices were necessary in order to win, and you accept it because they were never too great. You could have lost fictional characters that you may have cared about, or a town of innocent people you just met. And after all, if you wished to see them again, you could just play the game one more time, and see them in the timeless loop they existed in.

But Dan hadn't lost some fictional character. He hadn’t lost someone he’d grown to care a little bit about through a few minutes or hours of characterisation and exposition to save a town he cared just as much or little about. Dan had lost his best friend. Dan had lost Phil. And for  _ what _ ? What was he fighting for? At this point, he was just fighting for his life, and little else. And what would his life be after this? There was nothing for him at the end of this. He was lost in an unfamiliar, cruel world, with nowhere to go. The experience itself was far from worth fighting for. Terror had an iron hold of him constantly. His every muscle hurt. He had no motivation to win, no feeling of victory to reach for, he just kept fighting because he instinctively didn't want to lose – to die. Nothing but fear of negative consequences drove him to fight. He was exhausted, and they were losing.

Phil's words echoed in the back of his mind. "You can do it. You can win this." He did always have more faith in Dan than Dan had in himself.

He’d reached the tower that lined one of the main entrances into the village. The screams of innocent townspeople echoed through the streets, and he saw trails of smoke coming out of several buildings. As close as the buildings nearest to him, he could hear the sounds of a struggle.

He looked over the wall and into the forest. It seemed undisturbed, empty.

He looked back over to the smoking rooftops.  _ It’s over. You can’t do anything to help them. _

He found a rope in a storage chest, tied it around a pole, climbed over the spiky edges at the top of the wall, and used all the arm muscle he had to hold on to the rope and safely lower himself to ground level.

He then bolted into the woods,  fast as his legs could physically carry him, repeatedly telling himself that bravery was just recklessness in disguise and wouldn’t necessarily do anyone any good. Staying behind and failing to save the village was no more moral than saving the one life he could, even if that life happened to be his own.

He’d always been quite bad at fooling himself.

But he kept running.

It wasn’t long before his lungs felt like they could hold nothing at all, and yet tried to hold everything.

But he kept running.

The sticks and stones of the forest ground were stabbing into his feet with nearly every step. He wasted no time watching where he was going.

And he kept running.

His legs were simultaneously numb and screaming in pain.

But he kept running.

He heard the crackling sound of a building falling to the ground, collapsing when its supporting structures were too burnt to hold it.

And he kept running.

The collapse was followed by screams.

And he kept running.

He ran until the sounds of the town faded into the distance.

He ran until he could bear to listen to the forest without his chest aching with a cocktail of guilt and sheer terror at what he’d left behind.

Maybe in another life he could even have kept running. Maybe he could have kept going for hours and hours through the woods until he found some other town, some cave, some haven of safety.

However, in this life, he was terribly unfit, gasping for breath, scared to death, his feet were aching, and he heard something behind him.

***

Phil wakes up slowly, thoroughly disoriented.


	6. Awakening

_ The first thing he notices is his bed sheets. The hard ground is gone. His wounds are gone. Dan's arms around him have vanished. He's utterly alone, and for a moment, this terrifies him beyond compare. _

Thoughts rush through his head at lightning speed: _ where am I, what happened, what happened to Dan, is he okay, did they get him, did we lose, did I lose him _ – but then he really feels the ground around him, the bed sheets, the very familiar bed sheets, and he realizes.  _ He’s in his bed. His real bed. In the real world.  _

It was a dream. It was all just a dream.

_ And a horrifying one at that, _ he thinks. He feels like he's been through a serious emotional journey, genuinely struggling to get his mind out of the fictional world his subconscious created. Images, clear as memory, resurface to his mind, and as tired as he is, the lines between dream and reality blur quite a lot. He has to stop himself from immediately getting a hold of Dan, as he remembers that he’s probably sleeping, and that he doesn't know about any of this. 

Dreams are really weird like that. Seeming so real, they can change you and how you see things almost as much as real events, and yet they're  _ not real _ , at least not to anyone but yourself. Even when they involve other people, they don’t  _ actually _ \- those people weren’t truly there, and they won’t remember any of it. Like a separate reality inside your head, just as eventful as the outside, but only for your own eyes to see and remember.

Checking the digital clock on his nightstand, he sees that it's no more than 6:34 in the morning. He can tell Dan all about this after they've both gotten more sleep, assuming he'll still remember. He lies in bed for a good while, trying to let his the dream wash out of his system and his mind with a few deep breaths. However, every time he tries forgetting, images of those monsters, all the deaths, Dan's face as he died - they all came back in flashes, jolting him awake again.

Realising that sleep was just not going to happen, he decides to get up.  _ Half six isn't the worst time in the world to get up. Some people would consider that normal, actually _ , he thinks, shuddering lightly. YouTube may be a more stressful job than a lot of people think, but at least there is usually the freedom of getting up and working whenever you want to, which was a privilege he and Dan usually enjoyed quite a lot.

***

In the darkness, it was hard to see them coming, but he heard them. He tried his best to be quiet, holding his breath and hiding, curling up by the foot of a tree. There was little else he could do.

***

He walked out of his room, careful not to make too much noise by Dan's bedroom door, and walks into the kitchen. _ I could make breakfast? Maybe a bit early…  _ Grabbing a handful of Shreddies to munch on as he thinks, he decides to just get a bowl of it, and then he could make something special for him and Dan when the clock was nearing something they'd usually consider appropriate breakfast time so waking Dan up would be acceptable.

He tried his best to ignore that his hands were still shaking.

And so he sat down in the lounge, played some  _ Mario Kart _ and ate his cereal as he waited for Dan to get up.

***

Dan woke up with a gasp and a shout, his heartbeat throbbing in his ears, frantic.

Something… something was holding him down… Everything felt different, something was wrong. He felt around him, confused at the softness, at how  _ nothing hurt _ even though he could still feel the echo of pain from his limbs being torn apart.

He finally opened his eyes, and let himself  _ look _ , let himself see the reality he was in. Grey squares, of a variety of shades, a geometric monochrome that could not feel more pleasantly – and  _ confusingly  _ – as home. It was wrong, somehow, despite simultaneously being the least wrong thing in the world.

Phantom pain still made his arms tremble, and he struggled to take anything but short, panicked breaths. He could feel warm tears streaking down his face, and he was suddenly aware that the odd, halting feeling in his chest and throat were small sobs wracking through his body.

He laid curled up on his side, protecting his body from his night terrors. He tried to sit up on his trembling limbs, only faltering slightly, and tried to calm himself down with the familiar sight of his bedroom.

He was  _ in his bed _ . He was  _ safe. _

Hands still trembling, and breath still shaky, he let his eyes fall shut as he fell back to lie on the bed. He wouldn’t stop twitching, images of his last moments alive flashing before his eyes –  _ no, not alive, just in a dream, just in a dream, you didn’t die, you just woke up, get it together.  _ Adrenaline was still being pumped through his veins from the horrifying sights, and his body was trying to run away from his stupid dreams. He took deep and slow breaths, trying to keep them even, failing miserably.

Minutes later, he was still trying to calm down, when the clattering sound of kitchenware through the door brought him to reality – and brought his thoughts to something he’d somehow completely forgotten.

_ Phil. _

***

As the time was passing noon, Phil had decided it was fair to start making a proper breakfast. Still a bit rattled from his dreams, he wanted to do something extra nice for both himself and Dan. Real or not, experiences like that night really made you appreciate what you had - and all the things you didn’t. He figured a good solution for this was making a good batch of pancakes for them both. If Dan still hadn’t gotten out of bed by the time he was finished, he wouldn’t feel too guilty going in and waking him up. There was an unspoken rule between them that while sleeping past noon was nice, it was also an acceptable time to be awake, and while Dan didn’t appreciate getting pulled out of bed involuntarily, he would wake up faced with an offer of cooked food – and that, in Phil’s opinion, was the best way to wake up.

Only moments after, he heard some conundrum from the direction of the bedrooms. Suddenly, there was a sound of a door swinging open, and Dan was bolting down the hallway and past the glass door of the kitchen with a velocity and urgency Phil had hardly seen  _ anyone _ move with within the confines of a hallway, much less his couch potato of a flat mate. Eyes wide like a deer in headlights, he began moving hesitantly towards the door, only to jump back when said door almost hit him in the face. Before he’d quite registered the situation, he had two long arms tightly wrapped around him, nearly lifting him off the ground.

He spent a moment stunned and very concerned, feeling Dan’s breath shudder and some moisture seeping through his t-shirt.

“Uhm, Dan?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yeah?” Phil felt Dan mumble into his shoulder.

“You okay there?”

The sound Dan made might have been a “not really,” though Phil was honestly not certain of the wording. The message was clear, however, and he felt a tinge of worry that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to him as he let Dan hug him, unable to wiggle his arms out and properly hug him back, opting instead to use his limited mobility to stroke Dan’s lower back comfortingly.

“If you want to go put some clothes on, then I’ll have some pancakes ready in a moment. Then we could talk about it? If you want to? Or not, if you don’t,” Phil said. Dan pulled away, nodding with a sniffle and then clearing his throat, seemingly only now realising he was in just his pants. He probably hadn’t really considered it when he’d bolted out of his room, adding to Phil’s curiosity about what in the world was occupying his mind. 

Dan shuffled out of the room and came back soon after, fully clad in t-shirt and pyjama trousers. Phil smiled to himself. They had no set plans for the day, and as it was looking now, they weren’t going to be doing anything, either. That fit Phil quite well, really. After the night he’d had, he could do with spending a day inside with his best friend and some anime, and it didn’t seem like Dan would protest.

***

Dan’s hands were still shaking as he dug through his closet to find a t-shirt to wear. It took him all but a few seconds to decide that today was to be a pyjama day. No way was he going out of the house or doing anything productive – Phil could do as he liked, Dan was staying in.

_ I’d prefer if he’d stay in, too, though, _ he thought anxiously. He still hadn’t quite gotten his head out of his nightmares, and bloody images flashed before his mind’s eye if he stopped to think for too long.

Spotting Phil after he’d shot out of bed and turned the corner to the kitchen had been a surreal experience. There he’d been, the man who he’d last seen covered in scavenged rags and smudged with dirt and blood, fighting for his life in the darkness. There that same man had been, standing in the warm light coming in the window, his hair in a disastrous but clean mess, his glasses somewhat skewed on his nose, clad in some brightly coloured t-shirt Dan couldn’t see the front of and his Cookie Monster pyjama bottoms.

There he’d been, in one piece, free of injury and terror and all the horrors that plagued Dan’s mind, safely puttering around in their kitchen.

_ Of course _ Phil would do what he wanted with his day. Dan was in no way his keeper. However, that did not rule out some gentle persuasion on Dan’s part, and he’d do whatever he could to keep them both inside and not working for the day.

Getting dressed, Dan was making all sorts of plans for what he would say when he met Phil in the lounge again. On the one hand, it all seemed too important to not talk about - his hands were shaking and his chest felt like it was being pressed in a vice, and some little part of his head was convinced Phil wouldn’t even be there when he got back. On the other hand, it wasn’t important  _ at all _ . It was just a dream. It affected him, sure, but Phil wouldn’t understand if he didn’t explain it properly. He needed to talk about it, but he needed to keep his cool. None of it was real, anyway. It was all in its head, and Dan had had enough of being crippled by his own overactive imagination.

So he found a t-shirt and some trousers, flinching only slightly at the sight of his camouflage shirt in the closet, put some warm socks on, took a few deep breaths to calm his shaking hands and walked into the lounge. 

***

Phil had just placed two plates of breakfast pancakes on the lounge table when he heard Dan shuffling back.

He had no idea what was bothering Dan, but it worried him a lot because Dan was clearly very shaken by something. In some faraway corner of his mind, a part of Phil sounded all the alarms, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what connection it was making.

Whatever it was, Dan turned up in the doorway moments later. Phil heard a slight intake of breath as Dan turned towards him, and frowned as Dan for some inexplicable reason seemed...  _ surprised _ to see him there?

Dan just stood there, in the doorway, looking a bit lost, wide eyes locked on Phil.

“Dan?”

As Phil spoke, Dan closed his eyes and shook his head gently, clearing his throat. Jaw clenching, he settled on Phil with a determined look. 

He opened his mouth to form words, but it seemed he had none planned and all that came out was a slight noise.

Hearing his own voice waver and break even before any words had formed, whatever strings of courage had kept Dan standing up snapped instantly. Before Phil’s eyes, Dan’s brave face crumpled, and within a second his body had followed suit.

And so Phil was left kneeling on the floor by the doorway of his lounge, holding his shaking, sobbing best friend in his arms, who held onto Phil like his life depended on it.

Once he’d caught enough breaths to form the first blubbering words, Dan seemed unable to stop, his words so frantically delivered that Phil couldn’t have gotten a word in even if he tried, only interrupted by gasps of breath. The story he was telling, though jumbled and not very detailed, sounded strangely familiar - Phil could imagine it so clearly, see the action before him as Dan spoke. He shook his head, attributing it to Dan’s innate storytelling abilities.

“... And, and, I didn’t know what else to do, I just jumped the fence and ran straight into the forest, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I felt horrible,  I just didn’t know what else to do and -”

From the depths of Phil’s mind, a question popped up, and like he often did in conversations with Dan, he just let it tumble out of his mouth before thinking too much about it. “Wait, you got past the fence? How’d you do that? That thing was impossible!”

Dan raised his head to meet his eyes, looking at him a bit confused. “What do you mean? I … I didn’t mention anything about that, did I?”

There was a moment of silence as Phil tried to make sense of the situation - he genuinely didn’t know where the question came from. Before long, however, he saw those tear-filled eyes go from confused to very, very alarmed, and he realised the implications of what he’d just said, as the memories began pouring into his mind.

“No,” Dan whispered.

“Wait, did we just-”

“No, no, no, absolutely not,” Dan said, more frantically.

“- wake up from the same dream?”

“I do not accept this, that is not acceptable, this is  _ not happening _ .”

Seeing that Dan was freaking out more now than before, Phil tried to divert the subject. “But hey, enough about that, let’s talk about what happened, yeah?”

“No, no, this changes  _ everything _ , Phil! Horrifying as it was, my only consolation was that it was just a dream, just a very messed up figment of my messed up imagination, but if you  _ were really there _ , then this whole situation is  _ very different _ !”

Phil just let out a defeated huff, knowing Dan had a point, but not wanting to admit that to the man in front of him, who clearly did not need someone to tell him that he  _ should _ be freaking out right now.

He also did not flinch when Dan’s hands grabbed his face and an intense and frantic gaze was directed straight into his own eyes. “A dream you dream alone is just a dream, Phil, but a dream you dream together… is reality.”

“Who’re you quoting there?” Phil muttered, forever dedicated to lightening up Dan’s theatrically dramatic mood.

“I can’t for the life of me remember right now, and it’s probably hardly even relevant as I totally used that quote for a situation it was never meant to be used for, but that does not  _ invalidate my point!” _

There was a bit of a pause, Dan breathing heavily - not speaking but clearly still thinking.   
“But like… what does it mean?” he started again. “Where even were we? What does this even mean for the fabric of reality? What is real? What isn’t? Were we here in our own beds all the time - but then what is the connection, how were we connected?”

He sounded so hopelessly lost and genuinely really scared, Phil’s heart hurt a little. “I think,” Phil began, slowly. “That we can’t figure it all out just by talking about it…” Dan looked a little offended, but realised soon he had no counter-argument, and Phil had a point. “... and you need a cup of tea, and maybe a bit of a cuddle, because whatever happened, we can’t change it, and it’s  _ over _ now.”

The silent eye contact remained for a moment as Dan considered the situation, but eventually he sighed and gave in. 

Phil smiled and got up to go to the kitchen, shortly followed by Dan, muttering lowly, “The universe is falling apart. Nothing is real. Life’s an illusion.”

“Yes, yes, Dan, I know…” Phil said lovingly, taking two mugs out of the cupboard and turning on the kettle.


	7. Epilogue

In the end, they spent the day curled up in front of the television, alternating between playing Mario Kart and rewatching some wholesome episodes of Steven Universe. They briefly considered some other things, but quickly realised it wasn’t exactly the day for a  _ Lord of the Ring _ s marathon, and even the silliest episodes of  _ Buffy _ seemed too real and serious once someone got hurt or killed. It was bizarre what an experience like that could do, even if it was just their imaginations.

They fell asleep there, on the couch, to the sound of each other’s breathing. Nothing was said about it, really, but they both knew it wasn’t really just them accidentally falling asleep there. Neither of them wanted to face the empty darkness of their bedrooms alone, memories of the previous night flashing before their eyes, not knowing what might happen before they woke up the next morning or how the other was doing in the room across the hall.

After a few days, however, the incident was all but forgotten, as most dreams are. They’d later be able to recall the day that followed, and some images of the world they’d both fallen into. However, the experience did not haunt them for long, excepting some occasional flashes of recollection during the night that would be disregarded and forgotten by the next morning. There were times when Dan stopped to think about what happened, still confused about the logistics and what it all meant, but lacking any answers, was forced to go on with his day, and wilfully forgot to preserve his own sanity.

In fact, only a number of weeks had passed when a rain cloud with a particularly foul temper passed over London on their day off, and they decided it was a good day to marathon the Star Wars movies. Some bad planning and copious breaks to fetch more snacks and watch bonus material made the little marathon run into the early hours of the morning, and Phil, as per usual, was getting quite sleepy.

However, he was still watching, despite his tiredness, and through the lashes of his drooping eyelids, he let images of alien landscapes, fluffy creatures and sci-fi technology wash over his subconscious. Meanwhile the rain cluttered against the windows of the lounge, hiding the view of the gray, polluted city outside, and the sounds of heavy traffic, as Phil’s poor indoor houseplants were drooping on the window sill..

_ It looks so amazing, _ he thought dreamily, entranced by the bright colours dancing on the telly that slowly lulled him to sleep, a single last thought permeating his fading consciousness.

_ It’d be so cool to see it in person. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the adventures might even continue...
> 
> So sorry about any feelings I caused, I seemingly just can't write things without involving a great big dollop of tragedy _somewhere_... But I hope you enjoyed! This was both fun and occasionally a bitch to write, but in the end I don't regret it at all - it was mostly fun.
> 
> Many thanks to my Beta, nataliadeluckah, who helped out a lot with making this fic flow right and figuring out what parts to keep and what parts to cut, my artist, novatheinternet, whose creation I shall add to this soon enough, and my buddy monstermunch321 who really just read through it and said she liked it, but that in itself is a lot of help! If this ends up having a sequel, it's all on her, because she said she'd read it. (all urls from tumblr)


End file.
